Welcome to my page! I’m Eldad J. Levy Guerrero, a sociologist researching violence, security, and urban life, with a regional focus on Latin America and Mexico. I hold a Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of Texas at Austin, where I’m currently a Fellow at the Urban Ethnography Lab. From 2023 to 2025, I held the Alfred J. Hanna Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship at Rollins College.

All around the world, our cities are changing as we confront crises driven by climate change, inequality, and insecurity. In response, people are developing new strategies to manage risk and turning to experts to navigate these challenges. My current project investigates one such response: the rise of security entrepreneurship in Mexico City. It explores how security experts are reshaping urban economies, class relations, and the fabric of everyday life.

My research ties scholarship from criminology, economic sociology, urban sociology, and the sociology of organizations. I study how markets are mobilized to govern risk, and how private actors shape the infrastructures of security, social order, and inequality in contemporary urban settings.

I examine how global security markets introduce new technologies and professional norms that are transforming labor, space, and governance. In addition, I explore emerging forms of surveillance and the complex relationships between organized crime, the state, and private security actors.

My work has been awarded several honors, including the 2022 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Fellowship, the 2023 Harry Frank Guggenheim Emerging Scholars Award, The 2023 James Thompson Graduate Student Paper Award, and the 2023 Body and Embodiment Graduate Student Paper Award, among others. My first book manuscript, The New Security Experts: State, Entrepreneurship, and Labor in Mexico City, is currently in progress.

My academic research has appeared in leading journals such as The Annual Review of Criminology, The Socio-Economic Review, Qualitative Sociology, The American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Work and Occupations, and the edited volume Portraits of Persistence, with new and exciting work under review at The British Journal of Sociology. I also engage in public sociology, with writing published in OpenDemocracy, SinEmbargo, Work In Progress and other media outlets.