News & Events

PhD Candidate Meghna Mukherjee has published "How Do You Want Your Eggs? The Medical Management of Kin-Making and Reproductive Inequalities in the United States and India" in Social Problems. Congratulations!

Each year the department honors an outstanding graduating senior for overall accomplishment in sociology. This is the highest award we give to an undergraduate student. The committee looks especially at the paper or thesis submitted by qualified students, but also looks at general scholarship and demonstrated excellence throughout the student's entire career at Berkeley.  This year's winner is Esperanza Teresa Guadelupe Padilla. Her outstanding thesis is entitled: “Masking and Unmasking the Spectrum: The Consequences of Camouflaging Neurodiverse Identities.” 

Professor Christopher Muller has been selected to be a Radcliffe Fellow in 2022-2023.  During his fellowship, he plans to write a readable and engaging historical narrative, based on his research over the past 10 years, of how the Black incarceration rate from slavery to the present has been affected by the dynamics of exclusion and exploitation.

Congratulations to the editors in chief of the Berkeley Journal of Sociology - Tiffany Hamidjaja, Janna Huang, and Elena Amaya - for winning the Alumni Prize in Public Sociology!

Congratulations to PhD Candidate Audrey Augenbraum for winning the Leo Lowenthal Prize! This prize is in honor of the memory of Professor Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993), architect of the sociology of literature and popular culture, distinguished contributor to critical theory, esteemed colleague and beloved teacher in this department.  

Congratulations to PhD Candidate Emily Ruppel for winning the Herbert Blumer Prize!  This prize is given annually in memory of the ‘founder’ of our department, Herbert Blumer. It is given to the best paper written in a field of Professor Blumer’s interests, which included race, collective behavior, and symbolic interactionism.    Emily won the award for her paper entitled: "Disciplining Disability: The State Production of Precarity in Disability Employment Programs"  

Congratulations to Audrey Augenbraum, Justin Germain, Cathy Hu, Natalie Pasquinelli, and Emily Ruppel for winning the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award!  

Congratulations to PhD candidate Kristen Nelson for winning the Cynthia Ladd-Viti Leadership in Graduate Diversity Award!  

Congratulations to PhD candidate Meghna Mukherjee for being named a Charlotte W Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow for 2022!

Stephanie Rodriguez Gomez received the Robert J. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Recognition Award for Service to Undocumented Students

Berkeley  Sociology is ranked #1 Sociology graduate program in the 2023 Best Graduate Schools rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

Mara Loveman is the winner of the 2022 Faculty Mentor Award!

Berkeley PhD candidate Kimberly Burke is a Grad Slam semifinalist! The UC Berkeley competition will take place on 

Martin Eiermann has accepted a 3-year postdoc at Duke University.

Cristina Mora receives 2022 Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence and Equity.

Please click https://sociology.berkeley.edu/sociology-commencement-2022 for more information on the Department of Sociology 2022 commencement.  

Alicia Sheares has accepted a tenure track Assistant Professor position from Stanford University’s Management Science and Engineering Department   

Daniel Aldana Cohen's collaboration with activist Ilona Duverge in developing the Green New Deal for Public Housing discussed in https://gizmodo.com/green-new-deal-ilona-duverge-1846958759.

Robert Fales isn't a data scientist. He only signed up for the data science-focused sociology class because he wanted to work with Professor David Harding, a leader in the social science field. But once Fales started using data science tools to analyze education inequality data, he knew he'd be using them to transition sociology from his major to his career. 

In Pandemic Exposures, Didier Fassin and Marion Fourcade have assembled a