One of Matthew Desmond’s projects that started during his Ph.D. in the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Sociology culminated in his recent New York Times bestselling book and 2016 Go Big Read selection Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.
A faculty member at Harvard University since 2012 and a 2015 MacArthur "Genius" grant recipient, Desmond continues his research on poverty and teaches classes on poverty and inequality in America.
While at UW studying in the Institute for Research on Poverty, Desmond cultivated an interest in and passion for alleviating American poverty and inequality. His recent work and this book are to highlight issues that have always troubled him.
“America is unmatched by any rich democracy for the depth and extent of its poverty,” he explains. “That’s always confused me and left me troubled. And when I started this project I wanted to look at it from the ground level to understand the role that housing plays in deepening poverty in the United States.”
The book required countless hours of writing, ethnography, and statistical models to describe ideas such as the larger image of poverty in America and the specific picture of how someone’s dwelling looks as he or she is getting evicted. Desmond wanted to bring readers as close as he could to “the living experience of poverty.”
Evicted isn’t the first book Desmond has written. His advisor Mustafa Emirbayer encouraged him to also publish his master’s thesis.
"I can’t say enough about the Department of Sociology at UW. I felt the department was really challenging but collegial at the same time. I felt pushed and formed by my many friends and incredible mentors, all taking the Wisconsin Idea very seriously," Desmond says.
Desmond’s advice for students wanting to pursue the same path of research and popular writing is rather simple: put in the work.
“You simply put in the work, when you don’t want to work, when you’ve got a headache, when you’re tired. I also think that when I started out I was wrestling with how you do really good social science in ways that matter to audiences beyond just folks in the Academy. I just want to affirm that question because there is a massive amount of suffering in this world and we need to care about that first and use the tools in our training to address that.”