BIOGRAPHY

Sudhir Venkatesh is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is a researcher and writer on urban neighborhoods in the United States (New York, Chicago) and Paris, France. He is also a documentary film-maker. His most recent book is Gang Leader for a Day (Penguin Press). He has also published Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Harvard University Press, 2006) about illegal economies in Chicago. Off the Books received a Best Book Award from Slate.Com (2006) as well as the C. Wright Mills Award (2007). His first book, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (2000) explored life in Chicago public housing. His other writings and stories have appeared in The American Prospect, This American Life, and The Chicago Tribune, and he is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio.

Other ongoing research projects include a study of immigration and settlement in the suburbs of Paris, an in-depth study of re-entry among the formerly incarcerated in New York, and a long-term project on sex work in New York and Chicago with the economist (and Freakonomics author) Steven Levitt.

Venkatesh has produced several documentaries. The documentary film, Dislocation, follows families as they relocate from condemned public housing developments. The documentary aired on PBS in 2005. He directed and produced a three-part award winning documentary on the history of public housing for NPR. He is currently completing a documentary film on scholars and artists at-risk around the globe.

Venkatesh received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. He was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University from 1996-1999. He is currently Director of the Center for Urban Research and Policy, and Director of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship Program, both at Columbia University.