I am professor of sociology at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where I also direct the MA program in International Migration Studies. I have been the Editor of City & Community, an official journal of the American Sociological Association, since 2021. I am the author or editor of five books. My most recent book, Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City (Princeton University Press, 2024), examines how gentrification unfolds differently in small municipalities and gets morally justified through the use of racial discourses. Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press; 2017), is about the transformation of low-status occupations into "cool," cultural taste-making jobs (cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men's barbers, and whole animal butchers). And my first book, Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City (Princeton University Press; 2014), examines nightlife and conflict in gentrified neighborhoods. My work has appeared in such journals as Social Forces, Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, Journal of Urban Affairs, and Poetics. I serve on the editorial boards of the journals Work and Occupations, Metropolitics, and the Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. My overall research and teaching interests include urban and cultural sociology, community studies, work and occupations, and research methods (especially qualitative methods). Finally, I am a podcast host of the Sociology channel on the New Books Network.