Building Robust & Inclusive Democracy
Shomon Shamsuddin

Shomon Shamsuddin

Shomon Shamsuddin

Research/Areas of Interest

Housing; Education; Inequality; Policy Implementation; Community Development

Education

  • PhD, Urban Policy and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
  • MArch, Yale University, New Haven, United States
  • ScB with Honors, Brown University, Providence, United States

Biography

Shomon Shamsuddin is Associate Professor of Social Policy at Tufts. His research interests focus on two policy domains that are fundamental to cities: housing and education.

His housing research investigates the social and spatial consequences of housing development for low-income households. He explores how government agencies use discretion to shape the outcomes of affordable housing programs. He analyzes housing programs (including Public Housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits) at the federal, state, and local levels, with special attention to mixed-income housing, i.e. efforts to intentionally mix lower and higher income households together in neighborhoods.

His education research examines the structural barriers to educational attainment, especially for lower income students, and understudied ways to overcome those barriers. He studies how information and institutions influence access to higher education and college degree completion.

Overall, his research seeks to understand how institutions define social problems and develop policies to address urban poverty and inequality.

He teaches courses on the following topics: housing policy; housing, schools, and neighborhoods; and statistics.

Prior to joining Tufts, Shomon was a National Poverty Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He holds degrees from MIT, Yale, and Brown.