Jo Guldi, PhD, is a historian whose work focuses on nineteenth-century states and the infrastructure revolution. Her forthcoming book, The Road to Rule (Harvard University Press, 2011) argues that the eighteenth-century transport revolution in Britain polarized the nation in terms of politics and taught strangers to stop speaking. She has published widely on contemporary issues of infrastructure and economic development.

A graduate of Harvard, Cambridge, and Berkeley, she is currently a fellow at the Commonweal Institute in Palo Alto, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago, and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.