Making Sense of World History

Rick Szostak joined the Department of Economics at the University of Alberta in 1985. His B.A. is from McGill and his PhD from Northwestern University. Szostak's research interests span the fields of economic history, methodology, history of technology, ethics, study of science, information science, world history, future studies, and especially the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity. One theme common to much of his research is the importance of complex webs of causality. He served on the Board of the Association for Integrative Studies for most of a decade, and was President 2011-3. He was President of the International Society for Knowledge Organization from 2018 to 2022. He has served on the governing councils of the interdisciplinary programs in Humanities Computing, Science Technology and Society, and Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. He has spent sabbatical leaves at the University of New South Wales and European University Institute in Florence. In 2007, he taught at the University of Alberta Faculty of Arts study-abroad program in Cortona, Italy. He has taught short courses for the College of Europe in Warsaw on both interdisciplinarity and future studies since 2020. He is the author of 20 books and over 50 journal articles, plus dozens of encyclopedia articles and book chapters. His current research agenda is described on his web page, Department of Economics, University of Alberta.