Hilary Silver is Professor of Sociology, International Affairs, and Public Policy and Public Administration. She arrived at GW in 2017 after rising through the ranks at Brown University, where she is Professor emerita of Sociology and Urban Studies. Silver served two terms as Editor of City & Community, the journal of the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, which honored her with the Lynd Award for Career Lifetime Achievement.

She has been a consultant to major international organizations, such as the World Bank, United Nations, IADB, and International Labor Organization, on issues of social exclusion and inclusion, and to the US Government and the State of Rhode Island on racial disparities. She has held visiting appointments at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, INSEE, and INED in Paris, Centre des Sciences Humaines in New Delhi, Universite de Lille I, WZB, and Tel Aviv, Korea, Oxford, Bristol, Sussex, New York and Columbia Universities. She was a longtime Affiliate of the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies at Harvard, and a senior fellow at the Ash Center, Kennedy School of Government. She has received multiple grants from the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst [DAAD], National Science Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities and RI Council for the Humanities. The latter funded her two films, Southside and Direction Home. In 2016, she held a fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies.

With Clarence Stone and Greg Squires, she is co-organizer of the GW University Seminar on Bottom-Up Politics.