Raised in Japan to Canadian missionary parents, Susan Pedersen was surprised to become a professor at Harvard and then Columbia universities, teaching British, European and international history. Her books have sought to explain how welfare states shape families, how international organizations handle empires, and how women come to challenge political inequality and domestic subjection. Her children now grown, she divides her time between London and New York. She writes regularly for the London Review of Books and is the author of several acclaimed books. Her most recent book The Guardians was awarded the 2015 Cundill Prize for Historical Literature.