Nick Graetz

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. I’m also a Fellow at the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive climate policy think tank developing research on the climate and inequality nexus. This work includes collaborations with housing and labor organizers, policymakers, and federal agencies. I’m interested in communicating sociological perspectives to external audiences and building coalitions across academics, policymakers, journalists, and the public.

I am a demographer and sociologist studying the intersection of housing, population health, and political economy in the United States. My primary research focus is revealing the mechanisms through which the housing market entrenches inequalities in socioeconomic outcomes and population health. I do this by studying three interdependent units of analysis: groups affected by commodified housing relations (e.g., tenants), the economic logics governing commodified housing relations, and the actors upholding and profiting from those economic logics (e.g., owners, investors, lenders, insurers). Across all my research, I center processes of racialization and racism, especially how these shape conceptions of financial risk and value in the housing market.

My academic work in these areas is published or forthcoming in Social Forces, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Social Science & Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and elsewhere.