“Even growing up the way I did, I was shocked by the level of poverty I saw as a college student. I thought the best way to understand it was to get close to it on the ground level.”

American sociologist

Matthew Desmond is an American sociologist and professor at Princeton University. He is known for his work on housing, poverty, and inequality, and for leading the Eviction Lab there. At Princeton, he serves as the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology and as principal investigator of the Eviction Lab. He was formerly the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.