Matt Carson

Research Interests: organized labor & social movements, urban sociology, gentrification, political economy, neoliberalization, mass incarceration & police violence, historical methods, quantitative methods

Matt Carson is a PhD student in Sociology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He earned his BA summa cum laude at UCLA in 2024, completing prize-winning honors theses in sociology and political science. His first thesis analyzed construction union strategies and their effects on labor politics; his second examined how race, economic inequality, and gentrification shape police violence. Since graduation, he has collaborated with Professor Adaner Usmani on the History of Crime and Punishment Project and assisted the Center for Working-Class Politics with electoral research. At Harvard, he’s applying quantitative and historical methods to trace the political-economic roots of police violence and mass incarceration. Before academia, he worked as a union plumber for many years, a background that continues to inform his research.

Previous Degrees:
UCLA, BA 2024