Graduate
Graduate Program in Sociology at Northeastern University
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Northeastern University is home to an exciting interdisciplinary graduate program that leads to a Ph.D. in Sociology. The scholarly interests of our faculty are diverse. Ongoing research projects range from quantitative analyses of inter-group attitudes to comparative and historical investigations of regional, national, and globally-based institutional changes. Within our graduate program, this diversity is organized around four overarching themes that represent key "areas of concentration": globalization and international studies; urban affairs and community studies; gender studies; and social justice, conflict, and inequality.
In addition to the graduate courses offered in the areas of concentration, the program provides a general background in classical and contemporary sociological theory and quantitative and qualitative research methods. After completing a group of required courses in theory and methods, students work closely with individual faculty members to design their own course of study. In the past, these research areas (inside and outside of the four concentrations) include environmental justice, race and ethnicity, political economy of global capitalism, imperialism and development studies, social inequality, public policy, feminist theory, political sociology, social psychology, violence and social conflict, education, and the sociology of law, gender, immigration, and social movements.
Our faculty and graduate students work together in a number of interdisciplinary research projects, programs, and centers, including the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict; Center for Urban and Regional Policy (CURP); Institute for Urban Health Reasearch; Northeastern Environmental Justice Research Collaborative, the Institute on Race and Justice and the Women's Studies Program. Many of the faculty in the Sociology Department have additional interests and are affiliated with other departments on campus, including Women's Studies; Environmental Studies; Law, Policy, and Society; Latino, Latin American and Caribbean Studies; African-American Studies; Jewish Studies; and Criminal Justice. Students who wish to work with faculty in other disciplines are encouraged to enlist the aid of the sociology graduate director or their advisers in contacting individual faculty members.
The program specializes in making our graduate students into effective teachers, researchers, and writers. The program admits a relatively small number of graduate students each year. This affords students the opportunity to forge close working relationships with the faculty. Many graduate students receive funding assistance by serving as teaching assistants in their first two years of study. Upon completing their course work, students may apply to serve as teaching fellows for another two years. In exchange for a stipend and tuition, the teaching fellow teaches courses in their own area of specialization over the academic year. The program also offers training on how to become an effective instructor. Our goal is to provide our Ph.D.s with the type of teacher training and classroom experiences that prospective academic employers find desirable. The department also conducts a number of workshops on academic writing, and provides numberous funded research opportunities and other resources for our students with the centers or with individual faculty members. Many or our past and current graduate students are working with faculty around projects of special importance as part of their own dissertation. As a result, our students frequently present papers at professional conferences and publish articles during the course of their graduate studies. In addition, the Sociology Department and affiliated centers often host national and international conferences, furthering enhancing educational opportunites for our graduate students.
The program is primarily interested in accepting students that would like to obtain their Ph.D. in Sociology at Northeastern University. Students with an M.A. may apply to enter the Ph.D. program. However, students entering the program without an M.A. degree must first apply to the M.A. Program. Once students obtain the M.A. degree, they may then apply to the Ph.D. Program. The vast majority of students entering the M.A. Program go on to enter the Ph.D. Program. Once they have obtained their doctorate, our graduate alumni have been highly successful in both the academic and non-academic worlds.