Book Talk: Robert Sampson

Penn IUR, in collaboration with Penn's Department of Criminology, welcomes Robert Sampson for a book talk as part of the Donald and Margaret Sherman Family Lecture series. The Harvard urban sociologist has a new book out, Marked by Time: How Social Change Has Transformed Crime and the Life Trajectories of Young Americans (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2026), that is the culmination of three decades of work on the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. 

Robert J. Sampson is the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. He is also an Affiliated Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation, founding director of the Boston Area Research Initiative, and Scientific Director of the ongoing Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN+). He taught previously at the University of Chicago.    

Professor Sampson is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and, as Corresponding Fellow, the British Academy. He is the former President of the American Society of Criminology, and in 2011, he received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology.  

His research and teaching cover a variety of areas, including crime and criminal justice, the life course and social change, neighborhood effects, collective civic engagement, inequality, and urban social structure. In addition to Marked by Time, he is the author of numerous articles and multiple award-winning books, including Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (2nd edition, 2024), published by the University of Chicago Press.