Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond is an American sociologist and author, currently the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he is also the founding director of the Eviction Lab, a research center that tracks and studies eviction in the United States. His book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, and the National Book Award shortlist. Based on more than a year of fieldwork in Milwaukee, the book documents eight families as they struggle to keep their housing through eviction, and makes the argument that eviction is a driver—not just a symptom—of poverty. Desmond's subsequent book, Poverty, by America (2023), was also a major bestseller and won numerous awards. Desmond grew up in Winslow, Arizona in a family that experienced financial difficulty including foreclosure, an experience that later shaped his scholarly focus. He holds a BA from Arizona State University and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has been recognized as a MacArthur Fellow (a 'genius grant' recipient) and has written for The New York Times Magazine and other major outlets.