in sociology and modern social and economic history from University of Oxford in 1980, where he was a student of J.Clyde Mitchell, Angus MacIntyre, and Ronald Max Hartwell.

[13] With Richard Sennett he co-founded NYLON, an interdisciplinary working seminar for graduate students in New York and London who bring ethnographic and historical research to bear on politics, culture, and society.

[16] Calhoun spent portions of his early years in states like Kentucky and Illinois due to his father's role as a Protestant minister.

[17] Calhoun is married to Pam F. DeLargy,[11] a specialist in public health and population studies,[19] who transitioned back to academia after two decades in international development and humanitarian aid.

His views are explained in his essay "Towards a More Public Social Science", which first appeared in the SSRC's 2004 "President's Report" and has been translated, reprinted and widely circulated on the web.

[21] After September 11, 2001 he launched an initiative on "Real Time Social Science" [22] which included an essay forum that attracted more than one million readers.

As the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science Calhoun was in the academic year 2012-13 the beneficiary of "one of the biggest increases in overall pay and benefits" in the British higher education sector.

[23][24][25][26] As Director, Calhoun was very successful in raising funds for the LSE, including millions from the Marshall Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and many other donors.

[29] In 2013, the BBC faced criticism[30] for an undercover documentary filmed in North Korea, which involved students from the London School of Economics (LSE).

The BBC defended its actions, stating the documentary aimed to provide insights into life inside North Korea.

In December 2015 it was announced he would not seek a further term at LSE, instead choosing to step down and return to the United States in 2016 as President of the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles.

[39] From 2011 to 2021, he was as an Honorary Professor at the College d’Etudes Mondiales of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and held the distinguished "Cosmopolitisme et Solidarité" chair.

Calhoun has written more than 100 scholarly articles and chapters as well as books, among which his most famous is a study of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (California, 1994).