Lydia Wileden is an Assistant Research Professor with the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy (IMRP) at the UConn School of Public Policy. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Public Policy from the University of Michigan and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago.

Her research investigates the complex and often misaligned relationship between how residents think about and how researchers and governments measure neighborhoods.