James Wright

James D. Wright is an author, educator, and the Provost's Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Central Florida. Wright also serves as the Director of the UCR Institute for Social and Behavioral Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1973 and taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Tulane University before coming to UCF in 2001. He has published twenty-two books and more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, essays, reviews, and polemics on topics ranging from poverty to homelessness to guns in America to NASCAR to survey and evaluation research methods. His latest research monograph is Poor and Homeless in the Sunshine State: Down and Out in Theme Park Nation (written with Amy M. Donley). Wright is also the editor-in-chief of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, published in 26 volumes by Elsevier in 2015.

In addition to his university duties, Wright is an active member of the Orlando community. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, the Homeless Services Network, the HOPE Helps Foundation in Oviedo, the Orlando Area Trust for the Homeless, and several others. He is also a frequent consultant to the Heart of Florida United Way and Second Harvest Food Bank. Nationally, he sits on the Board of Directors of the Horowitz Foundation for Public Policy and is an active member of the Southern Sociological Society. Internationally, he serves as the Subject Chair for the Social Sciences to Scopus, Elsevier's journal indexing, abstracting and citation service. He teaches mostly graduate level courses at UCF, including: Program Design and Evaluation; Survey Design; Poverty and Homelessness; and Urban Sociology.