Prof. Michael Bess, Ph.D.

Michael Bess is the Chancellor’s Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he has taught for three decades. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and he has written five books, including Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II, Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in the Bioengineered Society of the Near Future, and The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000, which won the George Perkins Marsh prize of the American Society for Environmental History. Prof. Bess is an expert on the technological future, World War II, environmental history, and the challenges facing contemporary global society. Bess has been awarded the Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching, and the Vanderbilt Chair of Teaching Excellence. His research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright program, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.