Ben Zdencanovic (pronounced sten-CHAN-oh-vich) is an award-winning historian, author, policy analyst, and educator.
Ben is currently the inaugural Postdoctoral Associate at the Luskin Center for History and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a historian of the United States in the world, domestic and international politics, and economic and social policy.
Ben is currently working on two book projects. The first, titled Island of Enterprise: The United States in a World of Welfare, 1940 – 1955 (forthcoming from Princeton University Press), traces connections between the end of New Deal reformism, the rise of U.S. global power, and the birth of social and economic rights and the modern welfare state around the world in the mid-twentieth century.
His second book, tentatively entitled The Cold War on Poverty: Race, Labor, and Manpower in the U.S. Warfare/Welfare State, is a major reevaluation of the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s, viewing it as a political-economic response to the manpower imperatives of racial capitalism, the Cold War national security state, and the unfolding conflict in Vietnam.
Ben’s academic writings are in print or forthcoming from the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, the Radical History Review, Diplomatic History, and the Journal of American History.
His scholarship has been recognized with major prizes and awards from Yale University, the Transatlantic Studies Association, the American Political History Institute, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from such sources as the John F. Kennedy Library, the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In addition to his scholarly writing, Ben has written essays on history, policy, and politics for popular audiences in outlets such as the Conversation, the Boston Review, Jacobin, TIME, and the Washington Post.
At the Luskin Center for History and Policy, he regularly produces historically-informed policy research and contributes to the popular podcast Then & Now.
Ben earned his PhD with distinction from the Department of History at Yale University in 2019, where his dissertation was the winner of the Edwin W. Small Prize for outstanding work in United States history.
Prior to coming to UCLA, Ben was a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Jackson School for Global Affairs and an Assistant Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago.
