Devin Fergus

As a Senior Fellow at Demos, Devin Fergus is finishing his second book, Land of the Fee, on the rise of hidden consumer finance fees and its impact on the wealth gap in America. The book also serves as the basis for a documentary film being co-produced with the award-winning Rubicon Film Productions. The documentary examines why those on America’s frontlines who defend democratic capitalism have often been singled out to pay the highest consumer finance fees. He has written widely on politics, policy, and inequality.

He is also guest editor of Banking without Borders: Culture and Credit in the New Financial World for Kalfou, a journal published by the University of Minnesota Press. His first book, Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980 (Georgia, 2009), examines the political tumult of the 1960s and 1970s and focuses in particular on the battleground state of North Carolina, one of only three southern states won by Barack Obama in 2008 and host to the Democratic National Convention in 2012. This book was named the “Choice Outstanding Academic Book” by the American Library Association.

A former Mellon Fellow at Cambridge University, he is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including his most recent appointments to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, in addition to awards from the Gilder Lehrman Institute, NEH, and the Lumina, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations. He received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and teaches at Hunter College, the City University of New York.