Jake is an urban and political sociologist, focused on democracy, housing, and changing cities.

His research examines how community- and city-level processes exacerbate social inequality – and how we can reduce those disparities through institutional innovations and reforms. Jake’s writing can be found in Demography, City & Community, Urban Geography, Social Science History, and Political Behavior, as well as the New York Times, Boston Review, and Nonprofit Quarterly.

Jake is an assistant professor of sociology at Kean University. He was previously a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University’s Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4) and the Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC). Jake was a Dissertation Fellow with the Institute for Research on Poverty, a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Urban Democracy Lab, and a Research Fellow at Participatory Budgeting Project.