Smithsonian Journeys Experts

A writer who spent much of his career as a foreign correspondent, Adam Tanner has long studied the impact of colonialism, empire and globalization as a foreign correspondent, author and lecturer, with a special focus on the enduring impact of Europe on the rest of the world. He is an associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University, where he has been since 2011 as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation, then a fellow at IQSS.

He served as a Reuters news agency correspondent from 1995-2011, including as bureau chief for the Balkans (2008-2011), San Francisco bureau chief (2003-2008), and correspondent in Berlin, Moscow and Washington D.C.  He is one of America's leading experts on privacy and the commercialization of personal information and author of What Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal Data-Lifeblood of Big Business-and the End of Privacy as We Know It (2014) and Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records (Jan. 2017). 

He has appeared on CNN, Bloomberg TV, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, the BBC and VOA; written for magazines including Scientific American, Forbes, Fortune, Time, MIT Technology Review, the Boston Globe and Slate; and has lectured in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.