News & Events

New faculty, hired in clusters, to address global issues, equity, justice

Dr. Gail Omvedt passed away on August 25, 2021 at her home in India. She was 81.    Dr. Omvedt earned her PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley in 1973 for her dissertation titled, "Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India, 1873-1930."   

Mary Shi, in collaboration with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, has published Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance (Oakland: PM Press, 2021).  

Congratulations to Angel Ross, winner of the ASA’s Community and Urban Sociology Section Graduate Student Paper Award!

Congratulations to Isabel García Valdivia, co-winner of the Latina/o Sociology Section's Cristina Maria Riegos Student Paper Award!

Congratulations to Berkeley Sociology graduate Matty Lichtenstein, co-winner of the ASA Political Sociology section’s Best Graduate Student Paper Award!

Congratulations to Berkeley Sociology graduate Elizabeth McKenna, co-winner of the ASA Dissertation award for “The Revolution Will be Organized: Power and Protest in Brazil’s New Republic (1988–2018)”!

Nina Narahari, Salomé Ragot & Sydney Pon are recipients of the 2021 of the American Cultures Student Prize for "Responding to COVID-19: Immigrants Face Major Barriers to Accessing Essential Services in the SF Bay Area"

Two UC Berkeley faculty members from the College of Letters & Science, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Ellora Derenoncourt, have been named CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars.

Ms. Jules Means is featured on the PBS segment, "Older Adults are Heading to College in Pursuit of New Opportunities"  

Joe LaBriola's paper, "Class Inequality in Parental Childcare Time: Evidence from Synthetic Couples in the ATUS" (co-authored with Daniel Schneider published in Social Forces), wins a 2020 IPUMS Research Award for the best paper first- or co-authored by a graduate student using IPUMS time use data. 

Leo Goodman was UC Berkeley’s Class of 1938 Professor in the departments of sociology and statistics. He was widely considered to be among the founding fathers of modern statistics. He pioneered statistical analysis that revolutionized the study of poverty, inequality and other social phenomena. After his passing, New York Times published this article to memorize Prof. Goodman's achievement.     https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/obituaries/leo-a-goodman-dead-coronavirus.html  

Isabel García Valdivia's “Legal Power in Action: How Latinx Adult Children Mitigate the Effects of Parents’ Legal Status through Brokering”(Published in Social Problems) is the Winner of the Youth, Aging, and the Life Course Division’s Student Paper Competition within the Society for the Study of Social Problem.

The Department of Sociology at University of California at Berkeley is generating an applicant pool of qualified temporary instructors to teach a range of courses in the department should openings arise. The position’s duties include: undergraduate and graduate teaching. In addition to teaching responsibilities, general duties may include holding office hours, assigning grades, advising students, preparing course materials (e.g. syllabus), writing exams, and managing GSIs.

Jill Bakehorn has been honored with an Extraordinary Teaching in Extraordinary Times Award.

We are excited to welcome three scholars to our faculty.  Ekédi Mpondo-Dika is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. She will be taking a postdoctoral scholar position with Berkeley's School of Social Welfare before her faculty appointment starts in 2024. Dr. Mpondo-Dika is an ethnographer who studies emotion, family and inequality (https://www.ekedi.org).

The Chancellor's Awards for Public Service honor individuals and groups for their exceptional commitment to advancing social change through public service, a pillar of the university's public mission. Annually, thousands of students, staff, and faculty devote hundreds of thousands of hours to direct service to the community, and even more hours to research and partnerships that serve the public interest. This year, two students from our department won this recognition. They will serve as a representative of the university (including the Chancellor) at the event and in media.

Cristina Mora's work is cited in a New York Times article, "My Child’s Egg Donor Is Latin American. Does That Make Him Latino?."    

The Department of Sociology will be hosting a Virtual Graduation Celebration for Sociology majors who plan to graduate in Fall 2020, Spring 2021 and Summer 2021 terms. We will be sharing more details as the date gets closer, but for now, for those who can set aside May 17th 10-11:30 please save that time and plan to join us.  We look forward to celebrating your remarkable achievements together.

Dr. Andrew Barlow interviewed for a story on anti-Asian violence on the NewsHour,