As I begin my fifth year as Chair of the Sociology & Anthropology Department, it is my pleasure to welcome you to start of the 2023-2024 academic year.
As I begin my 15th year in the Sociology & Anthropology Department and my fifth year as Department Chair, it is my pleasure to welcome you back for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Northeastern’s Sociology & Anthropology Department is proud to offer undergraduate (BA and BS) degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology and many combined majors, as well as a Ph.D. in Sociology. Across our department’s two disciplines, we work together to help students develop a systematic understanding of human societies and cultures. Our faculty also contribute to a range of interdisciplinary undergraduate and Masters programs across the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) and throughout Northeastern University, including Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, International Affairs, and Network Science, among others. In each of these programs, and across levels of study, our students experience a rigorous curriculum involving methodological, theoretical, experiential, and substantive training aimed at enhancing critical thinking, social awareness, and a globally-oriented conception of inequality and justice. Our graduates are prepared for a range of career options, post-graduate educational opportunities, and a life of engaged, democratic citizenship. I encourage you to look through our many programs and reach out to me or the department staff for more information.
We begin the 2023-2024 academic year with a strong community of faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergrads. We begin the year with 31 impressive faculty members working across the fields of sociology and anthropology, and many with joint appointments in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Health Sciences, Business and the School of Law. Through affiliations and directorships of institutes and research centers across campus, including the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute (SSEHRI), the Center for International Affairs and World Cultures, the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research, and the Program on Human Rights in the Global Economy (PHRGE), our faculty and graduate students undertake research designed to help solve the world’s most pressing problems – from health disparities, to the impacts of climate change, to the inclusion, recognition, and dignity of persons marginalized by racism, ableism, sexism, and xenophobia, to growing wealth disparities and labor exploitation, to the full integration of refugees and migrants.
This year, we have the pleasure to welcome six new Ph.D. students. Our graduate student’s successes are helping raise the department’s profile and helping earn us recognition as one of the top sociology programs in the country. Our graduate students continue to receive prestigious fellowships and research grants from the National Science Foundation, Switzer Foundation, and Ford Foundation, and are publishing in top sociology and area studies journals. Our recent graduates have had strong placements in competitive post-doc fellowships, tenure-track appointments, research positions in think tanks and research institutes, and user experience research positions with top tech companies like Facebook and Constant Contact. See our full list of alumni placements here. If you want to know more about our Ph.D. program, I encourage you to contact of Graduate Program Director, Professor Tiffany Joseph.
Our faculty and students will continue to produce rigorous and relevant research and provide high quality education to students across Northeastern University. Our undergraduate students, particularly those involved with the Sociology and Anthropology Student Association (SASA), have a full slate of extracurricular activities planned to further enhance their learning outside of the classroom. One of our main goals continues to be creating more opportunities for undergraduate research. While many of our undergraduate students already work on independent and faculty-led research projects, we will be working to offer more opportunities for sociology and anthropology majors to develop coveted research skills and help produce solution-based knowledge. Please reach out to our Undergraduate Program Director, Professor Laura Senier, to learn more about these opportunities.
Many of our department events and committee agendas will continue to focus on issues of racial justice, anti-racism, and the decentering of Whiteness in our disciplines, fields of study, and in our departmental culture. After establishing a new faculty and student-supported committee last year to evaluating our teaching and learning on racial justice and racial justice, we will work this year to integrate our lessons learned into the undergraduate and graduate curricula and learning activities. We continue to be inspired by the Black Lives Matter protestors and others demanding institutional change and will heed their call. We remain committed to reflecting inward on ourselves as educators, students, and members of this community and continuing to build an anti-racist department.
I hope you enjoy learning more about our people and programs, and I welcome your questions and communications at l.weinstein@northeastern.edu.
Liza Weinstein
Chair, Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Associate Professor of Sociology
