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Nidia Banuelos has accepted a position as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Robert Woodruff Library at Emory University.
In Fall 2016, Yang Zhang will begin a tenure track position at American University in the School of International Service.
Le Lin has been awarded the William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship and will be designated as a William Rainey Harper/Provost Fellow.
Gordon Douglas has accepted a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at San Jose State University with a start date of fall 2017. He will remain in his postdoctoral position at NYU for 2016-2017, and will serve as Acting Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge, an interdisciplinary center for research and public scholarship.
Professor Kimberly Hoang's book, Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work, has been awarded four 2016 Distinguished Book Awards from the American Sociological Association. The book has received this honor from the Section on Global & Transnational Sociology, Sexualities, the Section on Race, Class, & Gender, and the Section on Sex & Gender.
Professor Kimberly Hoang's book, Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work, has been awarded the 2016 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems Global Division.
Congratulations to Yang Zhang who has won the 2016 American Sociological Association's section on Asia and Asian America's Graduate Student Paper Award for his paper, "Insurgency in Interstice: Rebellion Ecology and the Rise of the Taiping Movement."
Professor Kristen Schilt's paper, "Doing Gender, Determining Gender" has been awarded the 2016 Distinguished Article Award from the American Sociological Association's section on Sex & Gender.
Le Lin's paper entitled "Interstitial Emergence and the Making of Capitalism: The Thriving of Private Enterprises in China's Education and Training Industry" has been awarded the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE)'s FFJ-Network Q Best Paper Award for 2016.
Professor Kristen Schilt received a Neubauer Collegium Faculty Research Initiative for 2016-2019. She will be collaborating with Professor Patrick Jagoda (English) and Heidi Coleman (TAPS).
Professor Kimberly Hoang had been awarded the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society for 2016-17. Professor Hoang is collaborating on a project entitled “The Economy and Its Boundaries,” with Jonathan Levy, Amy Dru Stanley, and Elaine Hadley.
Professor Kimberly Hoang has been awarded a 2016 Fulbright Global Grant.
Professor Kimberly Hoang has been awarded a Social Science Research Council Transnational Research Junior Scholar Fellowship: InterAsian Contexts and Connections
Postdoctoral Fellow Michael Rodriguez-Muniz was just awarded the American Sociological Association 2016 Best Dissertation Award for his dissertation titled, “Temporal Politics of the Future: National Latino Civil Rights Advocacy, Demographic Statistics, and the “Browning” of America.
Assistant Professor Marco Garrido has been awarded the Neubauer Faculty Development Fellowship in the College for 2015-16. The J. and J. Neubauer Faculty Development Fellowships are funded through the generosity of Joseph and Jeanette Neubauer in support of excellence in teaching. The purpose of the fellowship is to recognize innovative and effective teaching and mentorship on the part of Assistant and Associate Professors who regularly participate in the College's instructional programs. Neubauer Fellowships are awarded upon the recommendation of the Dean of the College and the Masters of the Collegiate Divisions.
Congratulations to Cayce Hughes who has won the 2016 SSSP Sociology and Social Welfare division's graduate student paper award for his paper, "Negotiating Privacy in the Context of Poverty: Poor Mothers and the Social Safety Net."
Congratulations to Moira O'Shea, a second year PhD student, who received a 2016-2017 Fulbright U.S. Student Award to spend 10 months in Kyrgyzstan.
Congratulations to Katie Hendricks who has won the SSSP Sport, Leisure, and the Body division's graduate student paper award for her paper, "What the Action Is: Flow, Risk, and Gender in a Fire Community."
Andrea Haidar (A.B. '15) has received a Fulbright award and will spend 2016-2017 in Jordan.
Congratulations to Joshua Mausolf, a second year PhD student, who received the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship.
Congratulations to Allison Reed, a first year PHD student, and Tianjian Lai, a fourth year sociology major, who received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and to Danya Lagos, a second year PhD student, who received Honorable Mention.
Lara Janson has won the 2016 SSSP Law and Society Division Lindesmith Graduate Paper Competition for her paper entitled "Our Great Hobby: The Construction of Legal Consciousness in Online Networks for Buyers of Sex in Chicago."
Jaclyn Wong and Andrew Penner's article "Gender and the Returns to Attractiveness," Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 44:113–123. was featured in the Washington Post.
In Fall 2016, Marshall Jean will begin a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.
In Fall 2016, Tal Yifat will begin a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Ivey Business School, Western Ontario University.
In Summer 2016, Misha Teplitskiy will begin a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Crowd Innovation Lab, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard.
In Fall 2016, Marcelle Medford will begin a C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Sociology at Connecticut College. This two year appointment is part of the Creating Connections Consortium (C3) program.
In Fall 2016, Piper Coutinho-Sledge will begin a tenure track position as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Bryn Mawr.
In Fall 2016, Laura Doering will begin a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organizations at McGill University.
In Fall 2016, Jan Doering will begin a tenure track position as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at McGill University.
A two volume book written about Professor Andrew Abbott was recently released in France.
Rami Nashashibi's work in Chicago highlighted by President Obama at the 2016 Prayer Breakfast.
Ben Ross discusses material from his fieldwork on migration and the hairstyling industry in China on a recent TEDx Talk.
Kathleen Cagney has been elected to the Population Association of America's 2016-2018 Board of Directors.
Mapping the Young Metropolis: The Chicago School of Sociology, 1915-1940 ,The University of Chicago Library and Special Collections Research Center's most recent exhibit, will be running from June 22 to September 11 at the Special Collections Research Center Gallery. It explores the Chicago School's innovative methods and influential ideas that inspired and transformed the discipline of sociology.
Ben Merriman's Boston Review article, A Science of Literature, was recently highlighted by UChicago News.
Dingxin Zhao has been named the Max Palevsky Professor effective July 1, 2015.
Gawin Tsai will begin a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Health Policy and Health Services Research in the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI).
Mary Akchurin has been awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University's new Buffett Institute for Global Affairs.
Liping Wang has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong.
Louisa McClintock will spend 2015-16 as a post-doctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University extending her dissertation research on "Projects of Punishment in Postwar Poland: War Criminals, Collaborators, and the Reconstruction of the Nation." Following the post-doc, she has been awarded support as a visiting fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Museum to develop a comparative analysis of post-war Poland with legal transitions in Russia and Ukraine.
David Schalliol's work will be shown in an exhibit, An Invisible Hand, curated in collaboration with David Weinberg Photography and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. The exhibit explores the diverse experiences of poverty, and will be on display through July 25th. More information can be found here.
A new, two-year masters program, joint between the Social Science Division and Computer Science, will begin Fall, 2016, which links computational training with social science inquiry. A certificate in Computational Social Science will also become available for interested doctoral students. More details to come!
In Spring 2016, Maude Pugliese will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University.
Benjamin Ross' research on internal migration within the hairstyling industry in China has been featured on the Sinica Podcast.
We are excited to announce the following new hires:
Jenny Trinitapoli (Associate Professor of Sociology and the College) Jenny is a demographer and sociologist of religion with a rare combination of talents, exploring how faith and religious membership shape responses to the complex epidemic of AIDS in Malawi.
Ellis Monk (Assistant Professor of Sociology and the College) - Ellis brings his expertise in contemporary theories of social cognition and categories, his engagement with issues of measurement and methodology, and his contributions to the sophisticated comparative theorization of social inequality, particularly with respect to race and ethnicity.
Xi Song (Assistant Professor of Sociology and the College) - A highly skilled demographer from UCLA, Xi is pursuing the analysis of multi-generational processes of mobility and the persistence of advantage within lineages, working with data from both the United States and China.
Kimberly Hoang (Assistant Professor of Sociology and the College) - Working at the intersection of the sociology of gender and economic sociology, Dr. Hoang is the author of a multiple prize-winning ethnographic study of the organization and enactment of economic ambition within the diverse sex clubs of Ho Chi Minh City in the years just before and after the global financial crisis. She is now at work on a comparative study of the articulation of foreign investment and domestic economies in Southeast Asia.
We are also excited to announce that Michael Rodriguez Muniz, who is currently completing his doctorate at Brown, has accepted a Provost's Post-Doctoral Fellowship for the coming year, with an appointment in sociology. His research explores the processes of constructing consent to state practices of enumeration and categorization, particularly within immigrant communities. Andreas Glaeser will serve as his official mentor.
Donald Levine, sociologist and former dean of the College, 1931-2015. See more here.
"Meaning Found in Comparison," an exhibit celebrating the memory of Martin Riesebrodt (1948-2014), will be on display at the Joseph Regenstein Library March 16th - May 31st.
Sara Ray Stoelinga ('04) has been appointed director of the Urban Education Institute. Stoelinga will oversee all aspects of UEI, which combines research, practice and policy to improve pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade education for children in urban schools across the country.
Congratulations to the following students:
In Fall 2015, David Schalliol will begin a tenure track position as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at St. Olaf College.
In Fall 2015, Sam Perry will begin a tenure track position as assistant professor in the Departments of Sociology and Religious Studies at University of Oklahoma.
In Fall 2015, Abigail Ocobock will begin a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.
In Fall 2015, Jean Lin will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University.
On Tuesday, March 3 at 6:30pm, Michael Heaney ('04) discussed his new new book Party in the Street: The Antiwar Movement and the Democratic Party after 9/11 (with Fabio Rojas '03) at an event at the Seminary Coop Bookstore. It was a conversation with Bill Ayers in a new series called "Fresh Ayers." More information is available here.
Professor Terry Clark discusses his new book, Can Tocqueville Karaoke? Global Contrasts of Citizen Participation, the Arts and Development in an interview here. This book, co-authored with 17 global coauthors, outlines a new framework for analysis of democratic participation and economic growth. Clark's research was also a focus at the French speaking Sociological Association's conference in Montreal in October, 2014.
PhD student Sanja Jagesic's article "Being American Means Never Having to Fret Over Your Legal Documents" was recently published in Time Magazine.
David Reingold (PhD 1996) has been named the Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University.
Martin Riesebrodt, leading sociologist of religion, 1948-2014. See more here:
Linda Waite's work on health and again, through the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project is profiled here.
David Schalliol discusses his work on isolated buildings and demolition of a South Side Chicago neighborhood August 7, 6:30 pm at the Arts Incubator, Washington Park. Schalliol's work was recently covered by DNAinfo and he was also interviewed by Japan Today.
Ben Merriman's op-ed, "Why Doubt is a Scientific Virtue," was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Donald J. Bogue, one of the nation's leading demographers, 1918-2014 - See more here:
Gary S. Becker, Nobel-winning scholar of economics and sociology, 1930-2014 - See more here:
Congratulations to the following recent PhDs on their job placements!
Sanja Jagesic has accepted a Strategic Data Project Fellowship at the Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research.
Danielle Raudenbush will be joining the University of California-San Diego as an assistant professor in the Sociology department.
Gordon Douglas has accepted the Rebuild by Design postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU.
Liping Wang has accepted a postdoctoral position as a Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago.
Laura Doering has accepted a position at the University of Toronto and will begin as an assistant professor of Strategic Management in the Rotman School of Management.
Noah Askin has accepted a position at INSEAD in France and will begin as an assistant professor in their Organizational Behavior group.
Julia Burdick-Will will be joining Johns Hopkins University as an assistant professor in both Sociology and Education.
Daniel Huebner will start as an assistant professor in Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Jae-Mahn Shim has accepted an assistant professor position in Sociology at the City University of Seoul, Korea.
Michaela Soyer will begin as an assistant professor of Sociology at Hunter College.
SaunJuhi Verma has accepted an assistant professor position in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University as well as the 2014-15 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant.
The Chicago Maroon discusses #FOLLOWUS— a multimedia, multidimensional installation produced by Professor Kristen Schilt and Chase Joynt in collaboration with a group of undergraduate students. The exhibit uses archives, interviews, community folklore and creative reinterpretation to showcase untold, forgotten and unofficial narratives of the University of Chicago.
Professor Kristen Schilt's research on gender inequality and transgender rights has been featured on the Huffington Post.
Professor Kristen Schilt discusses her recent article, "Doing Gender, Determining Gender: Transgender People, Gender Panics, and the Maintenance of the Sex/Gender/Sexuality System" recently published in Gender and Society, on the Journal's blog. Co-authored with Laurel Westbrook, the article uses content analysis to examine reactions to recent transgender rights legislation.
We are pleased to welcome the following Postdoctoral Fellows and Scholars to the Department.
Sean Brown received his Ph.D. in the spring of 2013 from Northeastern University in Boston, MA. His dissertation was entitled, “Social Capital and Youth Baseball: A Qualitative Investigation of Parental Social Ties,” and it brought together several strands of sociological thought, including the role of children as indirect brokers in their parents’ social networks and the role of the organization in facilitating social capital among its members. Working with Dean Small now offers Sean the chance to continue exploring both the child-centered as well as organizational elements of social networks and social capital, not to mention the opportunity to branch out, both conceptually within urban sociology and methodologically, as he incorporates quantitative elements into his own work. Sean’s major academic interests include urban and community studies, social capital, and the sociology of sport. His office is located at SS 312, but he is rarely there, as he currently resides in Northern Virginia, where his wife works as a microbiologist and their two children work as agents of Chaos.
Michael Kozloski is a postdoc in the Department of Sociology, Center on the Demography & Economics of Aging and the Institute for Mind & Biology. He is currently doing his postdoc project on the relationship between salivary cortisol, mental health and sexual orientation in older Americans, using data from the National Social Life, Health & Aging Project (NSHAP). He is also a member of several research committees in NSHAP, studying how social, sexual, physical and mental health of the elderly interact to predict morbidity and mortality. He is funded by the National Institute of Aging and has been accepted into the National Institute of Health’s Loan Repayment Program. Michael holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago and an MS in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ellis Monk was born in Metro Detroit and earned a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2006 before completing a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley in May 2013. His dissertation, “Color, Bodily Capital, and Ethnoracial Division in the U.S. and Brazil,” is a comparative, mixed-methods examination of the social and economic significance of skin tone and hair as markers of ethnoracial division in the U.S. and Brazil. Currently, he is fashioning his dissertation into a book manuscript, continuing his research on post-Civil Rights Era politics in the U.S., and starting new research on health disparities.
Ahuja Vishal is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center on Demography & Economics of Aging. He received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Panjab University (India) in 1997, followed by a Masters degree in the same field in 2001 from the University of Toronto. He received an MBA and a PhD from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2013. Vishal's research focuses on developing decision analytic tools that can be easily implemented by healthcare professionals and policymakers to improve patient health, advance the quality of care and enhance the efficiency of delivery of care. Presently, Vishal is working on understanding how physicians and organizations learn (for example, about safety and effectiveness of drugs) and what factors promote efficient learning. To bring relevance to his research, Vishal attempts to draw from his diverse work experience (of over 7 years) in the corporate sector that includes stints in the chemical, manufacturing, and consumer goods industry.
Scott Washington received his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University, where he acquired a background in demography at the Office of Population Research. He has a wide variety of interests (ranging from quantitative techniques to the philosophy of the social sciences), but his primary areas of research include: stratification, culture, law, politics, comparative history, social theory, and race and ethnicity. A former Prize Fellow at the Center for Human Values and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, he is now finishing a book on the crystallization of the one-drop rule in the United States between 1880 and 1940. For his work Scott has received a number of awards, including fellowships and grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Research Council, the Board of Trustees at Princeton University, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
PhD student Lara Jansen's research on sex trafficking was featured in a report on Fox News.
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.
Dean Mario Small's paper critiquing scholars' over-reliance on Chicago as a case for generating a theory of 'the ghetto,' is discussed in Chicago Magazine's 312 blog.
Professor Michal Engelman's work on intergenerational relationships and senior migration, recently published in the journal Research on Aging, is featured in the New York Times New Old Age Blog.
PhD student Gordon Douglas is working with the curatorial team for "Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good," the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice International Architecture Biennale, for which he also co-edited the exhibition catalog. The installation, which explores the movement toward grassroots, informal, and unauthorized urban design interventions in cities around the world, opened in Venice last week and was awarded a rare Special Mention by judges.
Phd student Chris Takacs' research on how social relationships with peers and professors shape college students' trajectories is highlighted on the University homepage. Also featured is an undergraduate student's personal account of the impact Professor Abbott and other professors had on her life at the University and and beyond.
Phd student David Schalliol's work is featured in an Atlantic Cities series on America's rebuilding efforts. Schalliol and his collaborator are studying creative revitalization efforts in urban areas across the country, in over 30 cities.
Professor Karin Knorr Cetina has been invited to join the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, School of Social Science, as an Invited Visitor during the academic year 2012-13. Professor Knorr Cetina is also co-organizing and introducing (with Alan Kolata) a Conference on "Competition," at the University of Chicago Center in Paris, May 31-June 1, 2012.
Professor Mario Small has been appointed Dean of the Social Sciences Division. President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Thomas F. Rosenbaum announced that in appointing Prof. Small, they recognized him as a scholar and leader who would work with faculty to define the division's intellectual and educational direction, while building support for the division.
Professor Donald Levine's innovative course on African Civilizations is featured in the UChicago News.
Professor Linda Waite is a featured contributor to a New York Times series: "Are 'Family Values' Outdated?"
A new University of Chicago workshop, the Computational Social Science Workshop, provides a forum for scholars using a wide array of computational and analytical methods in the social sciences to discuss current research and methods.
PhD student Chris Takacs' research on how motivation and majors among college students has been profiled in a recent article on the Chronicle of Higher Education.
University of Illinois at Chicago hosts the Chicago Ethnography Conference, at which several University of Chicago sociologists will present their work.
The University of Chicago Urban Network hosts a screening of Urbanized, a documentary depicting the world-wide trend of rapid urbanization with a focus on the design of cities. Sociology PhD candidate Gordon Douglas will participate on a panel of experts offering commentary on the film.
The American Journal of Sociology has issued a call for papers for an upcoming special issue, "Causal Thinking and Ethnographic Research." Click here for details.
Scott Washington will join the department next year as a University of Chicago's Provost Postdoctoral fellow.
Phd student and visual sociologist David Schalliol was recently featured as a panelist in a conversation about Art and Politics at the Victory Gardens Theater.
The Greater Good Science Center at University of California-Berkeley features Professor Mario Small's research on how childcare centers broker social capital for mothers.
The department of Sociology is pleased to welcome Forrest Stuart to our faculty next year from the University of California- Los Angeles. Stuart's research interests include urban sociology, crime and punishment, law and race. His recent work explores how new forms of policing and criminal justice techniques shape the daily lives of marginalized urban communities, and how these communities resist these efforts at social control.
PhD candidate Juhi Verma's research was featured in the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture's fall newsletter. Verma is a 2011 CSRPC Dissertation Fellow whose research focuses on how unlawful labor practices occur within regulated markets through multi-country migrant recruitment networks, and how temporary workers resist these work structures through court remediation.
Professor Kristen Schilt's recent book, Just One of the Guys? Transgender Men and the Persistence of Gender Inequality (Chicago 2010), is featured in Gender News, a publication of Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research.
Phd student and visual sociologist David Schalliol was recently featured as a panelist in a conversation about Art and Politics at the Victory Gardens Theater.
The Greater Good Science Center at University of California-Berkeley features Professor Mario Small's research on how childcare centers broker social capital for mothers.
Michal Engelman and Kathleen Cagney recently joined the faculty. Michal is a demographer and gerontologist who focuses on the dynamics of population aging and the determinants of longevity and well being at older ages. She joins us from Johns Hopkins University. Kathleen is a demographer whose research includes the effects of neighborhoods on health, and racial and ethnic differences in access to health care/long-term care. She is also a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and joins us, most recently, from the Department of Health Studies at the University of Chicago.
The department of Sociology and the Committee on Social Thought invited Robert Bellah, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley, to deliver a public lecture about his recently published book, Religion in Human Evolution.
Phd student David Schalliol's photography, focusing on Chicago residential and commercial buildings, multistories and one flats with no neighboring structures, was recently featured in the University of Chicago alumni magazine. Schalliol will exhibit hisIsolated Buildings series at the Steenbock Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin, through April 8 and at the Hyde Park Art Center this fall.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on Ed Laumann's work on the impact of network position on middle-aged and older men's erectile dysfunction. Laumann and co-author Benjamin Cornwell find that the rate of erectile dysfunction when men's wives were closer to a friend than the men were was comparable to those with prostate issues. Results from the study, "Network Position and Sexual Dysfunction: Implications of Partner Betweenness for Men," are forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology.
Professor Mario Small and a group of other social scientists have created the University of Chicago Urban Network, the goal of which is to spur innovation in the study of urban processes and interdisciplinary discourse in urban research, theory and policy. One feature of the new network is a comprehensive web portal that provides researchers, practitioners, journalists, and the general public access to the latest research and resources on urban social science. One new feature of the portal is a current list of all workshop presentations related to urban issues anywhere in the University.
The Universite de Versailles Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines recently hosted a conference to recognize Professor Andrew Abbott's contributions to sociology and to examine those parts of his work that are less known in France. The organizers hoped to "extend and deepen the dialogue" between French sociologists and Prof. Abbott's work.
A report from the American Sociological Association, authored in part by Mario Small, demonstrates serious methodological flaws in the National Research Council's recent ranking of doctoral programs.
The New York Times featured Phd candidate Elizabeth Terrien's work on family perceptions of their pet dogs. Terrien conducted 90 in-depth interviews with dog-owners in Los Angeles, and found that families in affluent neighborhoods characterized their pets as companions or friends, whereas in lower income neighborhoods with large immigrant populations pets were more often conceived as "protectors." Terrien also observed clear differences between rural and urban conceptions of pets.
The National Science Foundation and other news outlets feature an article in Science by James Evans and sociology postdoc Jacob Foster about how the growth of electronic publication makes it possible to harvest vast quantities of knowledge about knowledge or "metaknowledge." This includes the influence of social context, beliefs, research tools and strategies on regularities in science content, and can be used to direct the next generation of scientific investigation.
The Chicago Sun Times reports that University of Chicago sociology alumnus Andrew Papachristos recently worked with the Chicago Police Department using social network analysis to identify key gang members who might be candidates for a novel crime reduction plan. Papachristos, a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Harvard University and an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has contributed to similar efforts in high-crime areas in Cincinnati and Boston, which have seen a sharp decrease in murders.
The Chicago Maroon interviewed Andrew Abbott about how he came to sociology as a discipline, his unique style of teaching, and his thoughts on what makes the University of Chicago unique.
Science Careers featured and commented on Cheol-Sung Lee's article "Incubating Innovation or Cultivating Corruption?: The Developmental State and the Life Sciences in Asia," in which he and Andrew Schrank explored the organizational bases of corruption in science. In China and Korea, where professors are given substantial state resources and a strict hierarchy structures lab relations, students are given neither the information nor the opportunity to call researchers on fraudulent claims.
In February 2011, the University of Chicago Press published George Simmel’s final work Lebensanschauung (The View of Life), co-translated from German by former sociology graduate student John Andrews andDonald N. Levine, and with an introduction by Levine and Committee on Social Thought alumnus Dan Silver. Composed in the years before his death, The View of Life was, according to Simmel, his “testament,” and is considered by some scholars to be the key to understanding his work.
Mario Small co-edited a special issue of Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, featuring new research on the relations between culture and poverty. After years of the topic being considered taboo, a resurgence of work has recently emerged. This work is featured in Le Vie des idées, the New York Times and National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation."
Miller-McCune discussed the implications of Mario Small and Anjanette Chan Tack’s in-depth interview study with pre-teen students and their parents at two high-poverty elementary schools in Chicago. The study examined the impact of student body turnover on friendships among children.