Matthew Desmond
American sociologist
Matthew Desmond is an American sociologist. He is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he is also the principal investigator of the Eviction Lab. Desmond was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. He was formerly the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University.
Education
As an undergraduate at Arizona State University, Desmond was a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in Tempe. In 2002, he graduated from ASU with a B.S. degree with highest honors in communications and justice studies. He received a Ph.D. in Community and Environmental Sociology (formerly known as Rural Sociology) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2010.
Honors
Desmond was awarded a Harvey Fellowship in 2006 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015. He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the 2017 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, and the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for his work about poverty, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. His 2017 Pulitzer Prize citation read, "For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty."
Works
Desmond, Matthew (2008).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Matthew Desmond” is american sociologist. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Matthew, Desmond and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american sociologist” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22096471. VIAF identifies the subject as 44638304. The Library of Congress control number is n2007018011. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2022, 2002, 2010 and 2006.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Matthew Desmond”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Matthew Desmond primary sources, Matthew Desmond archive and Matthew research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Matthew Desmond”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Matthew Desmond” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.