Gender/Sexuality Workshop: In the Gender/Sexuality workshop, we take a broad view of the study of gender and sexuality, placing it into conversation with studies of race and ethnicity, immigration, religion, labor, work, development, social theory, crime and punishment, culture, aging and the life course, social movements, education, medicine, and other subfields. The group was formed by sociology graduate students in 2009 to create a space to discuss graduate student and faculty work on gender and sexuality in the department as well as to support and connect students. We meet several times throughout the semester to workshop papers and read books of interest.
We meet at the beginning of the semester to see who wants to present work and to decide on a schedule collectively. For each session, we have one or two people perform their work and assign a discussant to provide thorough feedback, although everyone is expected to have read the work before we meet. Although it is okay if participants have to miss a couple of sessions, we appreciate it if people come to as many sessions as they can, particularly during semesters that they are presenting work. Meets regularly throughout the semester.
The Gender/Sexuality Workshop typically met every 3 weeks in Spring '25 for about an hour+/- 15 minutes. Activities included: shared readings & discussions, feedback on ASA submissions, feedback on works-in-progress, sharing resources/opportunities.
Spring 2026 Meetings:
Agenda: Date Time
Coworking space for workshop members 1/28/2026 12:00 - 2:00 PM
First Meeting 2/4/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Introductions, Group Intentions, Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups
Coworking space for workshop members 2/11/2026 2:00 - 2:00 PM
Coworking space for workshop members 2/18/2026 12:00 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 2/25/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 3/4/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Coworking space for workshop members 3/11/2026 12:00 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 3/11/2026 12:00 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 3/18/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 4/1/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 4/8/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 4/15/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Coworking space for workshop members 4/22/2026 12:00 - 2:00 PM
Coworking space for workshop members 4/29/2026 12:00 - 2:00 PM
Presentation/Feedback Sign Ups 5/6/2026 12:30 - 2:00 PM
Our first meeting will largely be introductions, selecting workshop activities/signing up to present on available days. Feel free to invite folks who might be interested!
If you would like to participate, contact one of the grad student organizers who will add you to the mailing list and send you the zoom link: Colby Fortin (colbyfortin@berkeley.edu), Hasan Henry (m-henry@berkeley.edu) & Alex K. Torrez (atorrez1000@berkeley.edu)
Job Market Workshop: These workshops for Sociology grad students are held throughout the academic year. All students who are considering entering the job market should attend the spring workshop (introduction to the job market), which will show them how to find job openings, prepare application materials, and request and submit letters of recommendation. All students who are on the job market should attend the fall workshops (the job talk, the campus visit, negotiating the job offer), which collectively will reveal how the job market process works post-application. Contact Assistant Professor Eliza Brown at elizaclairebrown@berkeley.edu.
Spring Workshops schedule:
Post Doctoral Application Overview
Friday, February 20 at 12:00pm, Zoom
Speaker: Eliza
Alt-AC Careers
Friday, March 13 at 12:00pm, Zoom
Speaker: Eliza and guest (TBD)
Preparing for Next Year’s Academic Job Market
Friday, November 7th, 12:00pm, Zoom
Speaker: Eliza
Politics, Culture & Society: In this space we'll share works in progress across a set of broadly defined and interconnected subfields, including (but not limited to) political sociology, sociology of culture, economic sociology, and social movements/collective behavior. The more diversity of methods and empirical topics, the better. I am imagining and hoping that participant interest will further shape the scope of this workshop.
Workshop purpose & format: Each month we'll meet up to discuss graduate and faculty writing, with the aim of collectively shepherding our work toward publication. One volunteer will share their work in progress (e.g., MA paper, dissertation chapter, conference paper, draft journal article), which participants will read in advance of meeting. We'll spend the hour discussing the work and providing constructive feedback.
Spring 2026 Dates
The PCS workshop will be meeting in room 420 on the following dates/times. Biweekly Thursdays from 12:00-1:30pm:
February 19
March 5
March 19
April 2
April 16
April 30
Contact graduate student Kristin Krusell at kirstin_krusell@berkeley.edu for more information.
The Anticolonial Workshop: Workshop centers anticolonial projects in the Caribbean, its global diaspora and anticolonial traditions and struggles around the world. The workshop brings together UC Berkeley students and faculty across disciplines to ground our understanding of what “anticolonial” means in our theory, methods, and praxis. The workshop is a space for knowledge exchange and feedback on work-in-progress, including papers, grant proposals, abstracts, and other materials.
Lead Organizer: Adriana Ramirez
Co-Lead: Anna Palmer, Meriam Salem
Spring 2026 Dates: TBA
Global South and East Asia Working Group: The Global South and East Asia Working Group will primarily be a reading group for this semester, and meet once a month to discuss a book that includes non-Western areas of study, scholarship, and schools of thought. The goal is to create a space to engage more deeply with scholarship from the Global South and East Asia, and encourage more international social science research. In the future, we hope to potentially include speaker events to highlight current social science research and theorizing from the Global South and East Asia.
Lead Organizer: Zhehang Zang
Co-Organizer: Alfred DiLissio
Contact: alfreddilissio@berkeley.edu
Meetings are every 4 weeks, Fridays from 12:00pm to 1:00pm. ***
Default to SSB 402 for room - unless otherwise stated
Readings and Meetings
Feb. 27 The Great Urban Transformation by You-tien Hsing
Discussants: Eujean Doo and Zhehang Zhang
April 3 The Border Within by Phi Hong Su
Discussant: Min Jee Lee
April 24 Capitalist Outsiders by Leslie Gates
Discussant: Alfred DiLissio
May 29 The Birth of the Geopolitical Age by Shellen Xiao Wu
Discussant: Autumn Mitchell
Planetary Mine by Martin Arboleda (if time permits)
Discussant: Autumn Mitchell
Sociology GradTalks
Lead Organizer: Sociology Graduate Student Assembly
Co-Organizer: Sociology GradTalks
These sessions showcase new, ongoing, or completed research, providing an engaging space to foster scholarly engagement and strengthen the department's commitment to collegial support.
Speakers, Dates and Location:
Hasan Henry - February 11, 12:00 pm, Room SSB 402
Diego Ayala - February 18, 12:00 pm, Room SSB 402
Jacqueline Brown - March 18, 12:00 pm, Room SSB 402
Nelle Garcia - April 22, 12:00 pm, Room SSB 402
Ghaleb Attrache - April 29, 12:00 pm, Room SSB 402
Kirstin Krusell - May 7, 12:00 pm, Room SSB 420
Sociology Scholarship Support Group (3SG)
Lead Organizer: Dori-Taylor Carter
Contact: dori-taylor@berkeley.edu
Location: Zoom Meeting Link
Every week, we co-write for 1 hour; every fourth week, we conduct a peer swap to gain feedback. If you want to do a peer swap sooner than that, let’s coordinate!
Here’s the schedule
Here's the plan
Interdisciplinary Conversations in Migration' (ICM) Working Group: With support from the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, we envision this working group as an interdisciplinary space in which scholars of migration, broadly speaking, can 1) write regularly through weekly writing accountability groups, 2) receive feedback on their work at a monthly workshop, and 3) benefit from professionalization support through conversations with established scholars of migration.
The following is the schedule for this semester’s events:
Introductory Meeting: Thursday, February 5th, 5-6 pm, SSB 475 and Zoom
Writing Sessions (Virtual): Tuesdays, 9-11 am and Thursdays, 4-6 pm
Workshops:
February 25th, 5-7 pm, SSB 475 and Zoom
March 18th, 5-7 pm, SSB 475 and Zoom
April 20th, 5-7 pm, SSB 475 and Zoom
Professionalization Conversations:
Demystifying Publishing with Dr. Vanessa Delgado
March 18th, 5-6 pm, SSB 475 and Zoom
Community Engaged Research with Dr. Michelle Vasquez Ruiz
April 20th, 5-6 pm, SSB 475 and Zoom
If interested in joining or learning more, please fill out the following google form: https://forms.gle/2e1FkRqqVFsC6Y566