Walker Kahn studies at University of Wisconsin. His research explores debt collection as a socially emergent process connecting market structures to the precarity of everyday people. Walker focuses on collections litigation to examine the tense relationship between rights and markets: in consumer finance, strategies and profits depend on creditors’ ability to seize borrowers’ property, creating a dynamic interaction between market structure, debt collection procedures, and the rights of everyday people.

His dissertation, Debtors’ Rights in the Age of Mass Securitization examines mortgage foreclosure as a nexus linking macro-level financialization to forced residential mobility among homeowners. This work traces how mortgage securitization transformed foreclosure into an actively managed profit center, making borrowers’ rights costs that industry players worked to reduce.  This work has been supported by the NSF Law and Science Dissertation Grant.

Walker received his J.D. in 2022 from University of Wisconsin. He received an M.A. from Columbia University, and a B.A. from New College. He also serves as Director of Policy for ProGov21.org, a free digital library of model laws and policies for progressive local governance.