Richard E.

Ocejo

Richard E. Ocejo is Professor of Sociology at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and the current Chair of the Sociology Department at John Jay. He is the author or editor of five books, including Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City (Princeton University Press, 2024), Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy (Princeton University Press, 2017), and Upscaling Downtown: From Bowery Saloons to Cocktail Bars in New York City (Princeton University Press, 2014). His current research project examines the motivations and social meanings behind community-based civic engagement through the case of repair cafes. Ocejo’s work has appeared in such journals as Social Forces, Social Problems, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Sociological Perspectives, and Poetics. He was the Editor of City & Community, the official journal of the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, from 2021-2025, and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Work and Occupations, Metropolitics, and the Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography. His overall research and teaching interests include urban and cultural sociology, community studies, work and occupations, and research methods (especially qualitative methods). Finally, Ocejo is a podcast host of the Sociology channel on the New Books Network.