Patrick Sharkey

Patrick Sharkey is the William S Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He completed his PhD in Sociology and Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2007, and taught at New York University for nine years before arriving at Princeton. Sharkey’s research focuses on urban inequality, violence, and public policy. His first book, titled Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality, received the Mirra Komarovsky Award for the best book of the year from the Eastern Sociological Society, the Otis Dudley Duncan Award from the Population Section of the American Sociological Association, and The American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in Sociology and Social Work. His second book, Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, The Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, was published in 2018 and was reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and many other outlets. In 2021, Sharkey was named one of the World’s Top 50 Thinkers by the United Kingdom’s Prospect Magazine based on his work arguing for a new set of community-oriented approaches to confronting violence.