Rate My Professor Max Besbris

Max Besbris is the H.I. Romnes Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He serves as Associate Chair of the department from 2023 to 2027 and Interim Associate Director of the Center for Demography of Health and Aging from 2025 to 2026. Besbris earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from New York University in 2017 and 2012, respectively, and dual B.A.s in Sociology and Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008, graduating with Highest Honors, the Sociology Departmental Citation, and Phi Beta Kappa membership. His academic career includes prior positions as Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2020-2023) and Rice University (2017-2020). He holds faculty affiliations with the Center for Demography and Ecology, Center for Financial Security, Institute for Diversity Science, Institute for Research on Poverty, and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison, as well as affiliate status with the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago.

Besbris's research investigates decision-making in economic markets, particularly housing and neighborhoods, how social interactions shape these decisions, and their consequences for racial and socio-spatial inequalities, with growing attention to climate change impacts on real estate and residential choices. He authored Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality (University of Chicago Press, 2020), recipient of the Midwest Sociological Society's Distinguished Book Award (2022), and co-authored Soaking the Middle Class: Suburban Inequality and Recovery from Disaster (Russell Sage Foundation, 2022) with Anna Rhodes. Key publications include “A Sociology of Real Estate: Polanyi, Du Bois, and the Relational Study of Commodified Land in a Climate-Changed Future” (Annual Review of Sociology, 2024), “The Housing Regime as a Barrier to Climate Action” (npj Climate Action, 2024), and “Effect of Neighborhood Stigma on Economic Transactions” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015). His work has earned awards such as the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship (2025-2030), Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from ASA's Consumers & Consumption Section (2025), and Early Career Public Sociology Award from the Eastern Sociological Society (2023), among others including NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2011-2014).