Matthew Desmond is a sociologist and the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, where he is also the principal investigator of the Eviction Lab. Desmond was elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
B.S.
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
degree, '' summa cum laude'' in communications and justice studies. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
.
Honors
Desmond was awarded a Harvey Fellowship in 2006 and a
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
in 2015. He won the 2017
Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published duri ...
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City''. His 2017 Pulitzer Prize citation read, "For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass
evictions
Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee (often, the prior owners who defaulted on a mortgag ...
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*Emirbayer, Mustafa and Matthew Desmond (2009). ''Racial Domination, Racial Progress: The Sociology of Race in America''. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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*Desmond, Matthew (2016). ''Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City''. New York: Crown/Archetype, 2016.
*Desmond, Matthew (2018). "Why Work Doesn't Work Anymore." ''New York Times Magazine'', p. 36, September 16, 2018.
*Desmond, Matthew (2019). "American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation." ''New York Times Magazine'', 2019 (part of The 1619 Project).
*Desmond, Matthew (2021), "Capitalism", chapter in '' The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story''.
*Desmond, Matthew (2023). ''Poverty, by America''. New York: Crown, 2023.