Philippe Bourgois has spent time with homeless communities and drug abusers, but soon he will take on a different sort of challenge - Penn students.
Penn president Amy Gutmann tapped Bourgois to be the fifth Penn Integrates Knowledge professor in a press statement released yesterday.
PIK is a University initiative that focuses on recruiting professors with interdisciplinary scholarly backgrounds.
At Penn, Bourgois will be on the faculties of both the Anthropology Department in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Family Practice and Community Medicine Department in the School of Medicine.
Bourgois is also the fourth Richard Perry University Professor, named in honor of Penn Trustee Richard Perry, who donated the $10 million that allowed for the creation of PIK.
Much of Bourgois's work concentrates on the ethnography of inner-city homelessness, violence and drug abuse. He is the author of the award-winning book In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio.
Bourgois will come to Penn from the University of California, San Francisco, where he is currently a professor in their school of medicine and vice chairman of the department of anthropology, history and social medicine.
Administrators say they are thrilled at the prospect of working with Bourgois.
"He'll make a tremendous contribution . across the school and the university," said Rebecca Bushnell, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.
His appointment begins July 1.
