About Eviction Lab

Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. He is the author of five books, including Poverty, by America (2023) and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Carnegie Medal, and PEN / John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. The principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, Desmond’s research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award. A Contributing Writer for the New York Times Magazine, Desmond was listed in 2016 among the Politico 50, as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate.”

Emily A. Benfer is an associate professor of clinical law (tenured) at George Washington University Law School. She first collaborated with the Eviction Lab in March 2020 to create the COVID-19 Housing Policy Scorecard. As a research collaborator with the Lab, she conducts legal mapping and policy surveillance of U.S. eviction and housing policy, including eviction moratoria, rental assistance, and right to counsel. Her clinic practice and research focus on the intersection of social determinants of health, racial inequity, and poverty with an emphasis on housing and eviction policies. Emily has widely published, testified before Congress, and appeared in numerous media outlets on these topics. Her research has been cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and in multiple federal bills and court orders. Emily’s volunteer activities have included serving as the appointed Chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Eviction, Housing Stability, and Equity, a member of the Legal Services Corporation U.S. Eviction Law Study Advisory Board, a policy advisor to the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, and a volunteer for the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. Emily also served as an Equal Justice Works Fellow and a Peace Corps volunteer. She has received numerous commendations for her efforts to advance health equity and housing justice, including the American Public Health Association David P. Rall Award for Advocacy and an American Bar Association Presidential Commendation. She was named one of Chicago’s Top 40 Lawyers Under 40 by the National Law Journal and recognized with the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership Outstanding MLP Award and the Clinical Legal Education Award for the best case or project in the United States.

Adam has a BA from Vassar College where he majored in Quantitative Political Science and minored in Political Philosophy. As an undergraduate, he worked as a research assistant analyzing the social network dynamics of promotion among Chinese government officials and its relationship to economic growth. Through Bluebonnet Data, he led a team of data analysts examining the prevalence and causes of ticket-splitting in southern Minnesota. He has contributed to the Eviction Tracking System as well as to research on landlord behavior and how eviction impacts displacement and the loss of food benefits. He is interested in Bayesian statistical inference, social science methods, and uncovering hidden patterns in housing insecurity and inequality. From Massachusetts, Adam enjoys backpacking and canoeing, ceramics, and learning how to cook new foods.

Bria Dixon is an Administrative Assistant at the Eviction Lab. She has a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources with a concentration in Environmental Science. A Jersey native, her recent focus is climate change and natural disasters in relation to sustainable development and the right to affordable housing during the COVID-19 pandemic. In her spare time, Bria loves to indulge in yoga, blogging, and traveling.

Daniel is a Research Specialist at the Eviction Lab. He holds a B.A. in mathematics from Middlebury College, where he wrote a senior thesis on knot theory. Previously, he worked as a paralegal at a labor and employment law firm in New York City. At the Lab, he works on the Eviction Tracking System and is interested in contributing to research dealing with housing inequality and climate change.

Kathryn (Kate) earned her M.A. in Urban Studies from Fordham University in 2022. After having worked in the architecture and historic preservation fields, she pursued her degree to supplement her professional experiences with critical study of the structural forces impacting social and economic justice in cities. Her graduate research explored innovative approaches to affordable and supportive housing and sustainable development. A former language educator in Newark and San Francisco as well as Helsinki, Finland, Kate brings a deep appreciation for cultural heritage to her work at the lab.

Juan Pablo Garnham is a Chilean journalist interested in cities, public policy, and immigrant communities. In his previous work as the Urban Affairs reporter for The Texas Tribune, Juan Pablo reported on the main challenges of Texas’ largest metro areas — Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso and Dallas-Fort Worth, where he is based. Juan Pablo has also worked as senior producer for the podcast In The Thick, editor of CityLab Latino, and City Hall reporter for El Diario in New York. In Chile, he wrote for some of the country’s most important magazines and newspapers. Juan Pablo brings his expertise as a bilingual and multimedia journalist to his position as the Communication & Policy Engagement Manager for the Eviction Lab.

Carl Gershenson is Lab Director at Eviction Lab. He has published on the causes and consequences of housing instability, with a special focus on how eviction leads to further economic and residential insecurity. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University, where his dissertation explored the political and cultural origins of the American business corporation. After graduation, Carl joined the Sociology Department at Washington University in St. Louis as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

At the Eviction Lab, Carl will continue to study how American political economy creates the conditions for the contemporary housing crisis. He is also deeply interested in issues around climate and energy, and he will work these interests into his research at Eviction Lab. When life gives him the chance, Carl likes to read history and fiction and explore Philadelphia.

For more on Carl’s research, go to https://scholar.harvard.edu/cgersh/home

Nick holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin, MPH from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in sociological methods, including Bayesian hierarchal modeling and data viz, racial segregation and urban life, education, and health policy. His work has appeared in Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, and The Lancet, among others.

Jacob is a Research Specialist at the Eviction Lab, where he contributes to research on eviction filing patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. He previously worked as a Research Associate with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. While there, he contributed to research on a range of topics related to regional economics and monetary policy. Jacob earned his B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis.

Grace Hartley is a Research Specialist at the Eviction Lab. Grace earned her B.A. from Smith College with a double-major in Statistical & Data Sciences and American Studies. She focused on studying mechanisms within the production of knowledge that drive inequality and oppression in America. As an undergraduate, Grace co-authored an R package that facilitates Partial Least Squares Regression on lake sediment core spectroscopy data. Through a partnership with a local public health non-profit, she worked on a team of students to create an interactive data atlas of public health indicator data in Springfield, Massachusetts. Prior to joining the lab, Grace worked on a small organic farm in Maine. She enjoys hiking, amateur film photography, and attempting to always be within a mile of the ocean.

Peter is an assistant professor of Sociology at Rutgers University-Newark. Peter first joined the Eviction Lab in 2018 as a postdoc after completing his PhD in Sociology and Demography at the University of California, Berkeley. At the Lab, he has done work on serial eviction filings, racial and gender disparities in eviction rates, eviction in suburban spaces, gentrification and eviction, and money judgments in eviction cases. He also developed and leads the Eviction Tracking System. Outside of the Lab, Peter’s research examines the ways that employment practices and public policies affect children and low-income families. He has also studied the effects of mass imprisonment on kin networks, exposure to subfelony criminal justice in New York City, and trajectories of employment and disability among American workers. Peter runs one marathon a year and no, he has not qualified for Boston (thank you for asking). You can read more about him at pshepburn.github.io.

Amber Jackson is a Research Specialist at Eviction Lab. Amber earned her B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Politics, Law, and Social Thought at Rice University. At Rice, Amber was also involved in numerous programs with the Center for Civic Leadership such as the Houston Policy Challenge, Alternative Spring Break, etc. During her undergraduate studies, she was able to do research projects on reproductive justice and housing policy issues focusing on their intersections with education, income, and race. At the Eviction Lab, Amber’s research interests involve studying racial residential segregation, Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and the effects of neighborhoods on quality of life and socioeconomic mobility.

Camila is a bilingual communications specialist for the Eviction Lab. She’s interested in eviction diversion measures, who gets harmed by evictions, and tenant organizing. Prior to joining the lab, Camila was the housing reporter for Connecticut Public through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to dive into undercovered issues. Her work has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PRX’s The World, NPR’s Here and Now and more. She graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.A. in journalism and communications.

Tasneem joined the Eviction Lab as a Program Coordinator in 2022. She received her master’s degree in Biomedical Informatics from The University of Chicago, and her bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. At the worker’s collective Berkeley Free Clinic, she provided free hepatitis/HIV testing and counseling to underserved community members, and became strongly opposed to health care delivery as a profit-making industry. Before joining the Eviction Lab, she worked in the Hollenbach Lab at UC San Francisco as a programmer and researcher, processing DNA samples in order to study the association between components of the immune system and varied health outcomes such as COVID-19 symptom severity. At the Eviction Lab, Tasneem hopes to participate in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of eviction-related data to make compelling arguments for policy change that will help alleviate poverty.

Tasneem loves to be taken for walks by her dog, crochet and sew (clothing items for said dog to inevitably reject), salsa dance (clumsily), and sing with her choir, Princeton Pro Musica.