Saskia Sassen worked with Artangel on Longplayer Assembly – joining 23 other participants in a non-stop 12-hour conversation relay presented live online on 26 September 2020, marking the twentieth anniversary of Longplayer.
Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a Member of its Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired till 2015. She is a student of cities, immigration, and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering and digitization three key variables running though her work. Born in the Netherlands, she grew up in Argentina and Italy, studied in France, was raised in five languages, and began her professional life in the United States.
Sassen is the author of eight books, translated into over twenty languages. She has received numerous awards and honours, among them multiple doctor honoris causa, the 2013 Principe de Asturias Prize in the Social Sciences, election to the Royal Academy of the Sciences of the Netherlands, and made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government.