Dr. James Robinson, university professor at the Harris School for Public Policy and the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, will deliver the 2025 Casper Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 4:30 p.m. in the AMU Lunda Room.
Robinson won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2024. He studied economics at the London School of Economics, the University of Warwick and Yale University. He co-authored “Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,” “Why Nations Fail” and The Narrow Corridor” with Daron Acemoglu.
Robinson’s next book, on Sub-Saharan Africa, titled “Wealth in People,” will be published in 2026. He is currently conducting research in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Nigeria, where he is a fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria-Nsukka.
The event is free and open to the public. No registration is required.
The annual Casper Lecture was inaugurated by the Department of History in 1993 to honor Rev. Henry W. Casper, S. J., a long-time member of the history departments at Creighton University in Omaha and at Marquette University. He was an expert in 19th-century European History and in American church history; his most important work was a three-volume history of the Catholic Church in Nebraska. The Casper Lecture, as well as several programs for graduate students in history, is funded by an endowment from Dr. and Mrs. Wayne L. Ryan of Omaha. Dr. Ryan was a student of Father Casper’s at Creighton.
