Fernand Braudel
Silver grew up in Detroit during a period of intense working-class struggle. She was active in the United Farm Workers Union and the solidarity campaigns for Chile. Silver received her B.A. in economics from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton, where she was part of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. During this time she collaborated with a number of scholars including Giovanni Arrighi, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Terence Hopkins and contributed to the development of the school of world-systems analysis. For many years she was a member of the World Labor Research Group at the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton.