Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond received his B.S. degree in communications and justice studies from Arizona State University and his PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first book, published in 2008, was entitled On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters, and he is also the coauthor of two books about the sociology of race with his doctoral advisor, Mustafa Emirbayer. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City was published in 2016 and brought Desmond to international prominence. The book received the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, and the 2017 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award. Desmond was also awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2015. Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University, having previously taught in the sociology department at Harvard.