PhD alum Zophia Edwards receives ASA’s 2026 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award
Our PhD alum, Zophia Edwards, has received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Scholarly Book Award for 2026. Currently on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Edwards is the author of Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago.
Sarah Miller publishes new book today
Sarah Miller’s new book The Tolerance Generation: Growing Up Online in the Anti-Bullying Era is out today on University of Chicago Press. The book “draws directly on insights from teens to reframe our understanding of bullying in the age of social media and why anti-bullying campaigns have been unsuccessful in combating it.” The press is offering […]
Spring 2026 department news highlights
Now that May is almost over, we look back on some highlights from another busy semester and all the tremendous accomplishments of our students, faculty and staff. First, congrats to the Class of 2026! Over 50 undergraduate Sociology majors participated in our convocation ceremony on May 17th. Stay tuned for more photos of the graduates […]
Loretta Lees awarded Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society announced today that Professor Loretta Lees has been awarded the Society’s prestigious Royal Medal. The award is given in recognition of extraordinary achievement in geographical research, fieldwork and expeditions, teaching, policy, professional practice and public engagement. The Royal Medals have been presented since the 1830s. Past recipients include Sir David Attenborough, […]
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 […]
Undergraduate Sociology student posters at ESS 2026
Earlier this month, a group of our undergraduate students traveled to Washington, DC for this year’s Eastern Sociological Society’s conference. On Friday March 6th, the ESS Undergraduate Student Poster Session III included the following BU students: Ju Derraik, “Stripping it Down: How LGBTQ+ Individuals are Intimately Repairing Body Image” Ella Wagner, “From Abstinence to Algorithm: […]
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 […]
February 2026 department news updates
The Spring 2026 semester is in full swing and our faculty, graduate students, and alums have some exciting updates to share: Nancy Ammerman is happy to report that she served as guest editor for a special issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, focused on “Religion and Bodies.” Jyoti Puri has one […]
Japonica Brown-Saracino’s new book on gentrification covered in The New Yorker
Japonica Brown-Saracino’s newest book The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea was published last month by Princeton University Press. It was listed in The New Yorker’s Briefly Noted column, available online here and appearing in next week’s print edition. The book was also featured this week in BU’s The Brink article, “You […]
December 2025 department news updates
Happy end of the semester! It’s been a busy one so we wish you all a restful winter break in the weeks ahead. Enjoy the holidays and see you in the new year… Joe Harris was recently quoted extensively in Newsweek for story on the American healthcare crisis. The article is available online here: Record […]