Robert J. Sampson is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, Affiliated Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation, and founding director of the Boston Area Research Initiative.  He has also taught at the University of Chicago.

Sampson is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society of Criminology, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He served as President of the American Society of Criminology and received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. Sampson was also elected as Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Professor Sampson's research and teaching cover a variety of areas including crime, disorder, the life course, neighborhood effects, civic engagement, urban inequality, and the social structure of the city.  He is the author of three award-winning books and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. His most recent book is Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, based on the culmination of over a decade of research from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, for which Sampson served as Scientific Director.  Great American City won the best book award from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, and the North American Regional Science Association.  Sampson’s work on the crime and the life course with John Laub was featured in Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points through Life (1993), and Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70 (2003), both published by Harvard University Press. Crime in the Making and Shared Beginnings won the best book awards from the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.