Brent Cebul is Assistant Professor of History. His scholarship sits at the intersection of urban and political history with topical interests in federalism, inequality, and political and economic development. His first book is Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Development in the American Century (under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press). The project explores how and why a range of 20th century liberal urban and rural development programs attempted to alleviate poverty by stimulating businesses -- but mainly exacerbated the former by privileging the latter. Prior to joining Penn, Cebul was the Mellon Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond. He co-authored Renewing Inequality, a digital historical mapping project that primarily explores the racial inequities of displacement in the federal urban renewal program between 1950 and 1966.