Joyce Appleby has long studied the impact of an expanding world market on people's understanding of the world and their place in it. Her research on England, France, and America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has focused on how economic developments changed people's perceptions of politics, society, and human nature. Her work on the founding era in the United States has concentrated on Thomas Jefferson and his legacy. Appleby earned a B.A. at Stanford, an M.A. at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University. She began teaching at San Diego State University in 1967. In 1981, she was appointed Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, a position she held until retirement in 2001. In 1990-1991, she served as the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University where she was a fellow of Queen's College.
