Devah Pager is Professor of Sociology and co-Director of the Joint Degree Program in Social Policy at Princeton University. She is also Faculty Associate of the Office of Population Research and the Woodrow Wilson School. Her research focuses on institutions affecting racial stratification, including education, labor markets, and the criminal justice system.

Pager's recent research has involved a series of field experiments studying discrimination against minorities and ex-offenders in the low-wage labor market. Her book, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago, 2007), investigates the racial and economic consequences of large scale imprisonment for contemporary U.S. labor markets.

Pager holds Masters Degrees from Stanford University and the University of Cape Town, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She spent the 2002-03 academic year as a Fulbright fellow in Paris studying changes in crime policy and its relationship to patterns of immigration and ethnic tension in contemporary France.