UCSB Arts & Lectures will present Sir Niall Ferguson, Why We Study History: Standing at the Crossroads of Past, Present and Future, 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8 at the Granada Theatre.

A foremost historian and provocative commentator on global politics and economics, Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.

He is the author of 16 books chronicling a range of political and socio-economic topics, from how the West handles disasters to the life of Henry Kissinger.

“With erudition, eloquence and humor, Ferguson puts today’s economic shifts, social changes and political disruptions into historical perspective, using the past as a roadmap to the future,” Arts & Lectures said.

Sir Niall Ferguson was knighted by King Charles III for services to literature in the King’s Birthday Honours List of June 2024.

Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

He is the author of 16 books, including “The Idealist,” which won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is also an award-winning filmmaker, having received an international Emmy for his PBS series “The Ascent of Money.” His 2018 book “The Square and the Tower,” was a New York Times bestseller and was adapted for television by PBS as “Niall Ferguson’s Networld.”

In 2020, Ferguson joined Bloomberg Opinion as a columnist. He is also the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of Ualá, a Latin American financial technology company, and a trustee of the New York Historical Society, the London-based Centre for Policy Studies and the newly founded University of Austin.

His latest book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe,” was published in 2021 by Penguin and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He is currently writing “Kissinger, 1969-2023.”

Tickets are $33.50-$58.50 for the general public; free for UCSB students with current student ID.

For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures, 805-893-3535, or purchase online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu or www.GranadaSB.org.