Arthur (Art) Alderson earned his B.A. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1988. He went on to earn both his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapter Hill in 1992 and 1997, respectively. Alderson began teaching at Indiana University's (IU) Department of Sociology in 1997 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2004, director of graduate studies in the Department of Sociology in 2005, and full professor in 2008. In 2017, he was appointed the associate chairperson of the Department of Sociology and was also titled the Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology. His research interests lie primarily in the areas of social stratification, economic and political sociology, comparative and historical sociology, and international development. Alderson authored, Compared to Whom? Inequality, Social Comparison, and Happiness in the United States (in Social Forces in 2016 with Tally Katz-Gerro) and The Changing Economic Geography of Large U.S. Law Firms (in the Journal of Economic Geography in 2016 with William D. Henderson) among numerous other research and teaching publications. Alderson's current research focuses on income distribution, the world city system, status, subjective well-being and consumption, and the globalization of production. Throughout his professional career, Alderson received various honors, awards, and grants to commemorate and encourage his sociological research. Alderson received the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant in 2007, 2004, and 2015 and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation Grant in 2011, among numerous others. Alderson’s achievements even span international borders as he was a fellow at the Prague Institute for Global Urban Development in 2004 and a visiting researcher in Berlin, Germany in 2013.