Spring 2026 department news highlights
Department updates from the most recent semester.
Allison Wigen & Caoyifu Zhou defend their dissertations
Two of our PhD students successfully defended their dissertations this past month: Allison Wigen’s Art at Work: Labor and Cultural Production in the Wake of Change on March 30th in the CISS conference room and Caoyifu Zhou’s Equal Quality, Unequal Success? Social Influence, Identity, and Dual Cumulative Advantage in a Controlled Music Streaming Experiment on […]
BU Sociology at ESS 2026 this weekend
The Eastern Sociological Society’s annual conference begins today in Washington, DC. The theme for ESS 2026 is “Transformation & Repair: Worldmaking in Contexts of Struggle and Constraint.” Below is a list of BU Sociology faculty and students who are participating this year. You can see the full conference program here. Thursday , March 5, 2026 […]
September 2025 department news updates
A new semester and academic year have begun and our BU Sociology faculty, students, post-docs, and alumni are as busy as ever! We have returned to a full Fall Seminar Series which we kicked off this week with Courtney Boen from Brown University. Now we’re looking forward to joining forces with The Newbury Center on […]
BU Sociology at ASA 2025
120th Annual Meeting: Reimagining the Future of Work August 8-12, 2025 | Chicago, Illinois | #ASA2025 The 120th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) starts this week! This year’s ASA will be in Chicago from August 8th to the 12th. It provides the opportunity for professionals involved in the scientific study of society […]
Summer 2025 Department News Highlights
Summer greetings from BU Sociology! Here are some recent updates from our students and faculty: Pamela Zabala Ortiz was awarded The Mauricio Gastón Institute’s 2025 Andrés Torres Paper Series Award for her book project, Situating the “Afro” in “Afro-Latinx”: Toward a Sociological Understanding of Ethnoracial Authenticity. CISS postdoctoral fellow and Sociology instructor Tatiana Padilla received the […]
Spring 2025 Department News Highlights
It was a busy Spring! Now that Summer Break is upon us, let’s look back at some recent highlights from this past semester. We are so proud of all the hard work and accomplishments of our incredible Sociology students, faculty, lecturers, staff, and alums: First, congrats to the Class of 2025! In case you missed […]
BU Sociology at #ESS2025 next week
#ESS2025: “Building Solidarity to Break Cycles of Repression” March 6-9, 2025; Boston, MA The annual Eastern Sociological Society (ESS) conference will be in Boston this year and it starts next week! It will include scheduled sessions, mini conferences, author-meets-critics, and more. BU Sociology faculty and students, both graduate and undergraduate, will be represented throughout the […]
Leping Wang publishes paper in Research in Social Stratification & Mobility
Sociology PhD candidate Leping Wang recently published a single-authored paper titled “Human capital and the upward occupational mobility of rural migrant workers in China” in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. In this paper, she explores the relationship between four human capital factors including formal education, professional training, professional certificates and the knowledge […]
Japonica Brown-Saracino & Landon Lauder quoted in new Boston.com article
An article published today on Boston.com explores the question “When can you say you’re ‘from Boston’?” It goes on to examine why the question, “So, where are you from?” can surprisingly be difficult to answer even for people called Boston home for many years. Japonica Brown-Saracino is quoted in the article, explaining: “As neighborhoods gentrify, […]