Exploring the Intersection of Art as a Social Science at BU: Meet Sociologist Jonathan Mijs
This article was written by Xiaowei “Kiwi” Yang (CAS’27) and Shayla Brown (CAS’26), interns in the Summer Writing Internship Program focused on social science writing.
The Center for Innovation in Social Sciences (CISS) is committed to highlighting the meaningful and impactful work being done across Boston University by social scientists. In summer 2025, SWIP (Social Science Summer Writing Internship Program) interns Shayla Brown (CAS ‘26; Anthropology) and Kiwi Yang (CAS ‘27; Sociology) are turning their attentions to an especially rich and evolving area: the intersection of the arts and the social sciences.
These two fields, often seen as distinct, are deeply interconnected. Artistic expression provides a powerful medium for communicating complex social realities, whereas the social sciences offer frameworks for understanding and interpreting the cultural, historical, and political contexts that shape art. Together, they create new pathways for empathy, awareness, and—most importantly—social change. Research continues to show that integrating creative practices with social inquiry can deepen understanding, foster connection, and inspire action.
When Lyrics Meet the Lens
Kiwi had the opportunity to meet with Professor Mijs and learn about his work. Growing up as an avid consumer of images and visual storytelling, Jonathan Mijs, an associate sociology professor at Boston University, had a passion for this medium long before he incorporated photography into his academic work.
“I think my childhood world was very visual—all the things I saw in museums or watched on TV and read in my comic books,” he says.
That interest in visual imagery later evolved into projects that take a very personal and expressive form. One example is a self-published magazine in which Mijs pairs his photographs with lyrics from popular music. Spanning years of travel and observation, the magazine brings together images from across the world, linked with songs that evoke a particular feeling or moment.
“It’s not necessary that I love the music,” Mijs says, “but it evokes something in me. I tried to bring those two different strands together.”
Though the project isn’t tied to his professional work, it reflects a way of seeing that Mijs carries with him everywhere.
“That has become something I cannot really shut down,” he says, “I take it with me—whether I’m doing sociology or just walking around participating in society.”
Framing the Social World
A sociologist and amateur photographer, Mijs pairs all his scholarly publications with his own photography—whether the image was taken with a specific academic project in mind or drawn from his earlier work.
“In my mind, the two are linked,” Mijs explains. “I find that images or photography tend to elicit some sort of response in people—sometimes what I intended, and sometimes something else entirely.”
In his recently published co-authored article “How Segregation Ruins Inference: A Sociological Simulation of the Inequality Equilibrium” (Social Forces), Mijs argues that the way we structure our social spaces and our institutions significantly shapes the experiences of those who inhabit and navigate them. Accompanying the article is a photo he took of a sticker on a lamppost that says, “hostile structures make hostile people.”
For Mijs, the pairing felt natural and powerful.
“It was such a great way in which whoever wrote that and put it there captured something that was at the core of my research,” he says.
He also notes that he might not have noticed the sticker at all if he hadn’t had that research in mind.
A similar interplay between his scholarship and photography is his article “Earning rent with your talent: Modern-day inequality rests on the power to define, transfer and institutionalize talent” (Educational Philosophy & Theory), where Mijs explores how talent, though often seen as the basis for merit, is unequally distributed, socially constructed, and economically leveraged in ways that reinforce inequality under the guise of moral deservingness. Coupled with this research is a photo Mijs took in a Cambridge, MA barbershop, showing a framed picture of two professional baseball players beside an old Life magazine featuring a glamorous young woman on its cover.
Both happened to be on the wall of that barbershop where Mijs waited for a haircut, and he recognized how they reflected culturally and historically specific forms of talent—athletic ability and physical beauty.
“Physical features can be monetized in a certain time and in a certain way, and athletic ability as well” he says.
Though the connection is more evocative than literal, the image vividly illustrates how talent is always contingent and historically contextualized—an idea central to the article’s argument.
Visual Sociology in Practice
One project where Mijs leaned heavily on photography as a way of data collection was his essay “Detroit’s Wealth of Ruins,” published in Contexts magazine, which exemplifies the characteristics of visual sociology. Accompanied by his photographs, the piece challenges conventional depictions of Detroit—a city often linked with decline.
“The whole origin of this project was that, back in the early 2010s, there was a lot of writing about Detroit,” Mijs says. “It was often portrayed as a tragic place—a symbol of the collapse of American manufacturing, a fallen empire.”
But what he encountered on the ground told a different story.
“When I visited Detroit with some friends, what I saw and experienced wasn’t just ruins and sadness. There was also creativity, excitement, and art,” he says. “The boundaries between vacant and occupied, ruin and art, destruction and creation weren’t so clear-cut. I tried to highlight that with my photographs.”
Through his lens, Mijs offers a richer account of the city, one that blurs binaries and captures the complexity overlooked by traditional methods.
What the Photographs Don’t Show
For Mijs, photography goes beyond documentation—it’s a complex, interpretive medium. At its core, photography captures only a single moment in time. It doesn’t show what came before or after, nor what’s unfolding just outside the frame.
“As a medium, it doesn’t just record,” Mijs says. “It creates an image, and that image can be created to different effects.”
Even when a photographer has a clear intention, the viewer may walk away with an entirely different impression. That subjectivity, he notes, makes photography a difficult, but also powerful, method.
During Mijs’ visit to downtown Detroit, he came across a moment that neatly captures this complexity. At first glance, he encountered what appeared to be a scene of urban decay: crumbling buildings, scattered debris, and a person seemingly guarding the ruins. It fit naturally into the narrative of a city in decline. However, the ruins turned out to be entirely fabricated—a movie set staged right in the heart of the city.
“It fits the story of Detroit lying in ruins,” Mijs says, “but if you know what you’re looking at, it’s actually 100% fake.”
The scene offered a striking example of how images, especially when stripped of context, can deceive, confirm assumptions, or obscure reality altogether.
In his teaching and research, Mijs engages with photography’s ambiguous position at the intersections of art, journalism, and social science. Though he’s only used it as a direct method in a few projects, he sees real value in visual tools, especially when paired with context and narrative. Writing alongside the images, he says, offers a way to guide interpretation and strengthen argument.
“That’s when having a photograph at your disposal allows you to make a case or to present evidence, supporting something that otherwise you would have to rely on words or numbers,” Mijs says.
As someone deeply attuned to the visual aspects of everyday life, Mijs believes photography should be taken seriously within social science.
“Because so much of our daily lives and culture is visual, I think it’s a really important tool,” he says. “It’s complicated to use it well, but I think we lose something if we just set it aside because it’s difficult.”