News & Events

PhD Student Emily Ruppel has an article published in Work and Occupations. Read abstract below, and click the link to read the full informative article.   

PhD Student Ángel Mendiola Ross has an article published on Social Problems. Read the abstract below, and click the link to read the full enthralling article.  

Today's San Francisco Chronicle includes a profile of Professor Emeritus Harry Edwards, a seminal scholar in the sociology of sport, a civil rights activist, and a former Black Panther Party member. 

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What is the role and impact of private firms in monitoring and enforcing international trade law? Professor Ryan Brutger recently sat down with Daniel Lobo, Sociology PhD Student and Social Science Matrix Communications Scholar, for a podcast to discuss Ryan's new article, "Litigation for Sale: Private Firms and WTO Dispute Escalation." This article presents a theory of lobbying by firms for trade liberalization, not through political contributions, but instead through contributions to the litigation process at the World Trade Organization.

Berkeley Sociology creates endowment to honor Professor Emeritus Michael Burawoy  

Meghna Mukherjee, a sociology Ph.D. candidate, explores how emerging reproductive and genetic technologies mirror societal inequalities. In 2020, she played a key role in launching the Social Science Research Pathways (SSRP) program at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. This program aims to equip undergraduate students with research skills, provide mentorship, and simultaneously assist graduate students with their research requirements in a more equitable manner.

PhD students Cathy Hu and Jasmine Sanders have been selected as Graduate Fellows at the Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI). 

PhD student Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya was awarded a $50,000 Dissertation Grant from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth for a project titled, "Employee Activism: Mobilizing Workers as Corporate Stakeholders." 

PhD student Maria-Fátima Santos received two paper awards from the American Sociological Association for her paper: “Modernizing Leviathan: Carceral Reform and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Brazil’s Espírito Santo State.” American Sociological Review 87(5): 889-918.

Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System (CRELS) is supported by a new $3M training grant from the National Science Foundation. Sociology Professors David Harding and Marion Fourcade are core training faculty, along with faculty from Statistics, Computer Science, the I-School, African-American Studies, Law, Public Policy, History, and Social Welfare.

PhD student Skyler Wang and a team of researchers at Meta AI announced and open-sourced a big foundational speech-to-speech translation AI model that can translate across 100 languages. 

Barrie Thorne’s Gender Play was a landmark study of the social worlds of primary school children that sparked a paradigm shift in our understanding of how kids and the adults around them contest and reinforce gender boundaries. Thirty years later, Gender Replay celebrates and reflects on this classic, extending Thorne’s scholarship into a new and different generation.

PhD student Daniel Lobo has published a Sage MethodsSpace blog post on "Why Black Representation in Data Science Training Mattershttps://www.methodspace.com/blog/sicss-howardmathematica-2022-participant-talks-about-why-black-representation-in-data-science-training-matters."

PhD candidate Isaac Dalke has published a paper titled, "I Come before You a Changed Man: “Insight,” Compliance, and Refurbishing Penal Practice in California," in the journal Law & Social Inquiry.  Abstract:

The ‘Un-Becoming’: A former Eastside gang member finds his resurrection tale at UC Berkeley BERKELEY, Calif. —  Jessi Fernandez joined a street gang at 13. By his 20s, he had been shot at more times than he could count... [read more]

Undergraduate Advisor Cristina Rojas, herself a sociology major, discusses What Can You Do With a Sociology Degree? in a recent article in  U.S. News and World Report. 

Professor Michael Burawoy and PhD students Margaret Eby, Thomas Gepts, Justin Germain, Natalie Pasquinelli, and Elizabeth Torres Carpio published a series of papers on "Laboring in the Extractive University" in the journal Work and Occupations. [read more]

PhD students Alonzo Ackerman and Jenae Carpenter have been named Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies (BELS) Graduate Fellows by the Center for Study of Law and Society.  Alonzo will pursue a project titled, "The Origins of Collective Bargaining in Teachers’ Professional Associations in the U.S." Jenae will pursue a project titled, "'The Civilizing Mission': The Genesis of Hyperincarceration in Settler Colonial Australia." Congratulations Alonzo and Jenae!

Raka Ray, Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Social Sciences, is this year's winner of the Jessie Bernard Award from the American Sociological Association. The award recognizes a scholar who has dedicated their career to enlarging “the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society.” [read more]