ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT

The University of Chicago Department of Sociology is among the great sociology departments of the world. Founded in 1892 as the first sociology department in the United States, Chicago has a proud tradition of creative and foundational work.

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DEPARTMENT AWARDS

Professor Edward Laumann has been honored with election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Andrew Abbott was recognized with the third annual "Theorodology Prize" at Princeton University where he delivered a prize lecture on "Theorizing the Economics of Knowledge-for-Itself."

Professor Andreas Glaeser received the University of Chicago Press R.D. Laing Prize for Political Epistemics: The Secret Police, the Opposition, and the End of East German Socialism (2011).

Dan Kimmel has been awarded a SAGE Teaching Innovations and Professional Development award. 

Professor Hans Joas has been awarded the Hans Killian Prize for his "outstanding lifetime scientific achievements."

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News

Professor Kristen Schilt has received the 2013-2014 Mellon Fellowship for Arts Practice and Scholarship through the University of Chicago Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. She will be designing a collaborative project with artist Chase Joynt that examines the politics of representation in first-person media production and sociological research. The two also will be teaching an undergraduate course in Fall 2013.

Professor James Evans is the director of the new Metaknowledge Network, which brings together social scientists, computer scientists and domain experts from several disciplines to explore how knowledge emerges, thrives, evolves and dies out. The Metaknowledge Network is a collaborative research initiative housed at the University of Chicago and the Computation Institute.

We are pleased to welcome Marco Garrido, who will join the department as an Assistant Professor.  Garrido is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. His research, based on extensive fieldwork in Manila, explores factors underlying urban poor communities' support for populist Philippino presidential candidate Joseph Estrada.

Scholars recently convened in Philadelphia to take part in a symposium honoring Professor Donald Levine's classic work, Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture, first published by the University of Chicago Press in 1965. The symposium was part of the annual meetings of the African Studies Association, being held at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. Levine's work was recently featured as the lead article in Theory, Culture and Society and the lead article in International Journal of Ethiopian Studies.

Danny Riemer (BA 2009) was recently elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in the 7th District, defeating a 29-year incumbent.

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