Steger began his academic career as a
Lecturer in Political Science at
Rutgers University (1992–95). After a brief stint as Visiting
Assistant Professor of
Politics at
Whitman College (1995–6), he joined
Illinois State University as an Assistant Professor of Politics and Government (1996–1999). There, he was promoted to
Associate Professor (1999–2003), and then Professor of Politics and Government (2003–2005). From 2005 to 2011, he held an appointment as the Professor of Global Studies at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. In 2011, he joined the faculty of the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, where he served as a Professor of Political Science until 2016. Since 2016, he has held the position of
Professor of
Sociology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Additionally, he was appointed as an Honorary Professor of Global Studies at RMIT University from 2015 to 2018, held the position of Distinguished Global Fellow in the Center for Advanced Studies at
EURAC Research in 2021, and served as a Global Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Culture & Society at
Western Sydney University, from 2019 to 2022. Since 2011, Steger has been an Executive Board Member of the Global Studies Association North America. Since 2022, he has been a Member of the Board of Directors at the University of Hawai’i Professional Assembly. ==Academic research==