Dr. Steven Thrasher, or Steven William Thrasher is an American writer and editor who is currently the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting and an assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 2019. His journalism has appeared in The Village Voice, The Guardian, Scientific American and The New York Times. He is a Contributing Editor for BuzzFeed. He was the recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year award 2012, and the Al Neuharth Award for Innovation in Investigative Journalism 2015. In 2017, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the American Sociological Association’s journal Contexts and in 2019, he was awarded a $75,000 Creativity and Free Expression grant from the Ford Foundation. His first book, The Viral Underclass will be published by Celadon Books in August 2022.