[2] Venkatesh is the author of the book, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets, published by Penguin Press in 2008.

[4] Venkatesh describes his switch from mathematics to sociology in graduate school as a result of conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago's inner-city neighborhoods.

[7] In 2021, he began hosting the podcast Sudhir Breaks the Internet, which focuses on the tech industry, particularly social media companies.

Venkatesh is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology & African-American Studies at Columbia University, a position he has held continuously since 1999.

[8] Venkatesh served as the Academic Director of the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, a global Executive MBA program for the advertising industry, from 2011 to 2012.

Based on nearly a decade of doctoral fieldwork in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, American Project "seeks to reexamine public housing from the inside out, and to salvage its troubled legacy.

The book chronicles the life of urban poor in Chicago, particularly the Robert Taylor Homes and the gang, the Black Kings, whose leader J.T.

"[20][21] Venkatesh's 2022 book, The Tomorrow Game: Rival Teenagers, Their Race for a Gun, and a Community United to Save Them, focuses on families surviving poverty and gun violence in a Southside Chicago community[22] Venkatesh served as director of the MA in Global Thought for Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought from 2015 to 2016.

In 2012 Venkatesh revealed to The New York Times that he had reimbursed Columbia University for approximately $13,000 of $240,000 of funds that were misallocated during his tenure as director of ISERP.

[18] His most recent documentary film project, titled At the Top of My Voice, follows a scholar and artist who return to the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia to promote democracy and safeguard human rights.

[9] He has also contributed to Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's Freakonomics in a chapter entitled, "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?"