Aaron Horvath

Aaron Horvath (PhD, Stanford) is a Research Scholar and Associate Director of Research at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Drawing insights from economic and organizational sociology, he conducts research and writes on the democratic contradictions of American philanthropy, the quantitative rationalization of the civic imagination, and the digital intermediation of community life. His work has appeared in outlets ranging from the American Journal of Sociology to the Boston Review, has received multiple awards from the American Sociological Association, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Currently, he is developing a research initiative, the Program on Private Wealth and the Public Good, aimed at broadening the aperture on philanthropy to understand how various aspects of private wealth—the people that accumulate it, the ideas that inform its distribution, and the forces that seek to constrain it—end up influencing the character of the public sphere. Learn more about Aaron’s work and find a complete list of publications at aaronhorvath.org.