George Steinmetz (born November 13, 1957) is the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan.
He is a historical sociologist of empires, states, and cities, with a focus on modern Germany, France, and Britain and their colonies.
He held a Guggenheim Fellowship (1995-1996), won the Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting in Sociology (awarded by the American Sociological Association, 2006), and was a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (2017-2018).
Steinmetz is also the author of The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire (2023), which "examines the nexus of colonialism and empire in the writings of dozens of French social scientists.
He co-directed and co-produced a 92-minute documentary film “Detroit: Ruin of a City” (2012) with Michael Chanan.