Sven Steinmo holds the Chair in Public Policy and Political Economy at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His teaching and research interests include the field of comparative politics, public policy, institutional theory and most recently experimental social science methodology. Professor Steinmo began his teaching career at the University of Colorado in 1987 and has been visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo; Gothenburg University, Sweden; the Max Planck Institute, Köln; the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, Sweden; and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po), University of Bordeaux, France. He is also currently an Honorary Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense.

Professor Steinmo has been awarded multiple international honors over his career, including the Riker Prize for the best book in Political Economy (APSA), the Gabriel Almondo Prize for the best dissertation in Comparative Politics (APSA) as well as the German Marshall Fellowship, the Abe Fellowship and the STINT Advanced Researcher Grant. Steinmo's most recent book, The Evolution of Modern States, was recently awarded the Gunnar Myrdal Prize (2011), by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. In 2012 he was also awarded a European Research Council "Advanced Researcher" Grant in support of his project "Willing to Pay? Testing Institutionalist Theory with Experiments".