Frederick “Fred” Wherry is the Vice-Dean for Diversity and Inclusion in the Office of the Dean of Faculty and the Townsend Martin, Class of 1917 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he is also an affiliated faculty member in African-American Studies. He is currently writing a book What Debtors Deserve (under contract at Crown Publishing) that examines the rise of mass debt, which now rivals mass incarceration in scale, and exposes the predatory tactics of debt collectors and the court system . He founded the Debt Collection Lab (debtcollectionlab.org) and the Dignity + Debt Network (dignityanddebt.org) where he works on issues of economic justice. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of nine books, including Credit Where It’s Due: Rethinking Financial Citizenship (with Kristin Seefeldt and Anthony Alvarez), The Oxford Handbook of Consumption (with Ian Woodward), and Money Talks (with Nina Bandelj and Viviana Zelizer). He was president of the Eastern Sociological Society and the Social Science History Association. At Stanford University Press, he co-edits the book series Culture and Economic Life.

Photo Credit: Ricardo Barros