Ted Beatty

Biography & Research

Ted Beatty is professor of history and global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and a core-affiliated faculty member of the Kellogg Institute. He specializes in economic development in Latin America, especially Mexico. He has examined the role of institutions in economic development, the intellectual and material bases of policy formation, and the history of technological change. He served as interim director of the Kellogg Institute from 2007 to 2009 and as associate dean for academic affairs in the Keough School from 2015 to 2023. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Beatty is the author of "Institutions and Investment: The Political Basis of Industrialization in Mexico before 1911" (Stanford University Press, 2001) and "Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico" (University of California Press, 2015), winner of the Friedrich Katz Prize for best book on Latin America and the Caribbean from the American Historical Society. Beatty has received research support from the National Science Foundation, the Instituto de Iberoamérica at the Universidad de Salamanca, and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He is currently working on an NSF-funded project with Israel Garcia Solares which examines the global history of engineering between the 1870s and the 1930s.

Recent Work

• “Engineers and Corporate Management, ca. 1870-1930: the Invisible Hand Redux,” with Israel G. Solares, (Enterprise and Society)
• “Mexico and the Puzzle of Partial Harmonization: Nineteenth Century Patent Law Reconsidered,” in Graeme Gooday and Steven Wilf, eds., ("Patent Cultures: Diversity and Harmonization in Historical Perspective") 
• “Riqueza, Polémica, y Política: Pensamiento y Políticas Económicas en México, (1765-­1911)" (Series Historia Moderna y Contemporánea)
• "Globalization and Technological Capabilities: Evidence from Mexico’s Patent Records ca. 1870-1911" (Estudios de Economía)

Courses

• World Economic History (course for undergraduate global affairs major)
• Blueprint for Modernity: A Global History