Gwendolyn Dordick

Gwendolyn Dordick is a Doctoral Lecturer in the Department of Sociology. She received her B.A. from UCLA and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University. Before coming to the City College of New York – CUNY she taught at Hamilton College and Harvard University. Her research concentrates on the consequences of Poverty and Homelessness. Her book, "Something Left to Lose: Personal Relations and Survival among New York's Homeless," concerns the efforts made by four groups of homeless people in New York City to construct shelter in places where it was not meant to be and is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork. Her later research explores the development and implementation of a comprehensive and coordinated continuum of both housing and supportive services designed to help the homeless overcome personal problems such as substance abuse and mental illness. This new policy focuses on “improving” homeless people by exploring the intersection of housing and recovery, more generically referred to as sober housing, and is intended as a study of policy in action. She is currently studying panhandling in New York City.