Philip Kretsedemas

About Philip Kretsedemas

Philip Kretsedemas is a sociologist and public intellectual based in Massachusetts. He serves as Managing Director of Research, Evaluation, and Data Analytics at the Acacia Center for Justice. His work focuses on immigration law and policy, social policy, and the study of race, ethnicity, and national identity.

Kretsedemas was born in Toronto, Canada. His father was a first generation immigrant from Greece and a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth. His mother was Jamaican and later adjusted to U.S. citizenship. He lived in the Bahamas and England before his family settled in the United States in the late 1970s. He grew up in South Florida and attended the Nova school system.

He earned a B.S. in Communications from the University of Miami in 1989, with study in film and screenwriting. He later completed a PhD in Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 1997. Before returning to graduate study, he worked in South Florida’s commercial production industry with Levinson Productions.

His career has moved between nonprofit and academic roles. He worked at the Human Services Coalition of Dade County (now Catalyst Miami) in communications and welfare reform policy analysis. He later held policy, communications, and development roles at the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. In higher education, he taught at Florida Memorial University and Toronto Metropolitan University, and served as a Professor of Sociology at UMass Boston from 2005 to 2022, reaching Full Professor. His publications include journal articles and books on immigration enforcement, social policy, and media and identity. He also served as the inaugural editor of the journal Genealogy.