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Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh is an Indian American sociologist and urban ethnographer. Born in India, he is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia University. He is also the director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Charles H. Revson Fellowship, and a board member at Philadelphia-based nonprofit Public/Private Ventures. In his work, Venkatesh has documented criminal gangs and the drug trade, and has written about the dynamics of the underground economy including street prostitution, contributing his findings to the research of economics professor Steven Levitt.

Venkatesh moved with his family to Southern California suburb of Irvine. There he was active in sports and excelled in his academic studies while attending University High School.

Venkatesh received a B.A. in mathematics from UCSD in 1988. He attended graduate school at the University of Chicago where he studied under Professor William Julius Wilson, focusing on Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project in Chicago about which he wrote a book, American Project. Venkatesh also authored a 2008 book titled, Gang Leader For A Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets. The book chronicles the life of urban poor in Chicago, particularly the Robert Taylor Homes and the gang, Black Kings, whose leader J.T. he befriended. He found that most foot soldiers in drug gangs make only $3.30 an hour.

In a separate research project with Steven Levitt, he hired former sex workers to track working street prostitutes in Chicago, finding that they make about $30—$35 an hour, with those working with pimps making more and suffering fewer arrests. A street prostitute was arrested about once per 450 tricks, while 3% of the tricks were given for free to police officers to avoid arrest. Condoms were used in only 20% of the contacts.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0