Associate Professor Salvatore Babones is a quantitative comparative sociologist in the School of Social and Political Sciences within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. His research specializes in post-socialist transition societies, Australian social policy, and the use of quantitative methods for cross-national comparisons. Babones earned his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2003, Master of Science in Engineering in Mathematical Sciences in 2002, and M.A. in Sociology in 1997, all from The Johns Hopkins University. He also holds a B.S. in Sociology from the University of Montevallo, awarded in 1991. Prior to his appointment at the University of Sydney in 2008, he served as a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh from 2003 to 2008. In 2015, he was a visiting associate professor at Nanyang Technological University and a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica. Babones received a Taiwan Fellowship in 2015.

Babones is the author or editor of fourteen books and several dozen peer-reviewed articles, with his work garnering over 3,800 citations according to Google Scholar. Key publications include Dharma Democracy: How India Built the Third World’s First Democracy (2025), Australia’s Universities: Can They Reform? (2021), The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts (2018)—recognized as one of the best politics books of 2018 by The Wall Street Journal—BRICS or Bust? Escaping the Middle-Income Trap (2017, co-authored with Hartmut Elsenhans), American Tianxia: Chinese Money, American Power, and the End of History (2017), Sixteen for ’16: A Progressive Agenda for a Better America (2015), and Methods for Quantitative Macro-Comparative Research (2014). His influential edited volumes encompass Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis (2012, co-edited with Christopher Chase-Dunn) and Global Social Change: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (2006, co-edited with Christopher Chase-Dunn). Babones contributes significantly to public discourse as a commentator on Australian higher education and public policy. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Indian Century Roundtable.

Professional Email: salvatore.babones@sydney.edu.au