Frederick F. Wherry

Frederick F. Wherry is the Vice-Dean for Faculty Development and Inclusion in the Office of the Dean of Faculty, and the Townsend Martin, Class of 1917 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he is also an affiliated faculty member in African-American Studies. He founded the Debt Collection Lab and is the author, editor, or co-editor of ten books, including Viral Debt: The Production and Reproduction of Economic Vulnerability (academic press, edited volume, March/April 2026), Credit Where It’s Due: Rethinking Financial Citizenship (with Kristin Seefeldt and Anthony Alvarez), The Oxford Handbook of Consumption (with Ian Woodward), and Money Talks (with Nina Bandelj and Viviana Zelizer). At Stanford University Press, he co-edits the book series Culture and Economic Life. Wherry has served in advisory roles to the American Law Institute, the Aspen Institute, the Legal Services Corporation, the Department of Justice, and the Julian Bond Institute at the Center for Responsible Lending. He previously taught at Yale, Columbia, and the University of Michigan and was a Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.