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About the Graduate Program
From its founding, the Brandeis Sociology Department has had a distinct culture that links the key normative questions of democracy, social justice, and the good life to the critical traditions of European and American social thought and Chicago School methods of rich ethnographic fieldwork in communities and institutions. The graduate program's goal has been to oblige students to formulate questions of social and analytical importance in "big picture" terms and submit these questions to the test of rigorous qualitative research. While we have added comparative and historical methods over the years, as well as quantitative methods, our center of gravity has remained the qualitative analysis of institutional change. The Brandeis Sociology Department's graduate program strives to promote conceptual vitality, autonomous thinking, engagement with the empirical world, and critical analysis. We train our students to think theoretically and to investigate their ideas with methodological rigor.
We are a small program that achieves a great deal. Our virtues include innovation, faculty accessibility to students, a high level of communication, minimal bureaucracy, and a collegial atmosphere of mutual respect. We offer flexibility in our program without sacrificing intellectual standards to allow students the opportunity to define individual research interests and courses of study. The training we provide is selective, focused, and deep. Our program boasts five pillars of expertise: Gender and Feminist Studies, Medical Sociology, Politics and Social Change, Culture and Religion, and Theory and Methods.
Our graduates have consistently been on the cutting edge of critical work in sociology; their books and articles have won recognition and awards, and have changed the public agenda in important ways. We value innovative teaching and make every attempt to ensure that our students have the opportunity to develop teaching skills, explore new pedagogies, and collaborate with us in making the department an exciting place.
Degree Programs
The Sociology department offers five different graduate degree programs.
- First is the doctoral program that leads to a Ph.D. in Sociology. Students enrolled in this program may elect to earn an M.A. in Sociology or a joint M.A. in Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies along the way to the Ph.D.
- In addition, the department offers two joint Ph.D. programs, one in Social Policy and Sociology with the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, and one in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Sociology with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies.
- The department also offers two different Master's programs: a stand-alone Sociology M.A. program and a joint Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies M.A. program.
There are specific course tracks and requirements for each of these programs.
We invite you to use the links above to learn more about our department and students. Further information on graduate studies in general at Brandeis is available from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.