Workshops

The department enjoys a high level of collective intellectual activity, hosting more than 10 workshops and study groups where faculty, graduate students, and visitors present current research. Below is information about the graduate workshops and study groups currently offered by faculty in Sociology and affiliated faculty. Students interested in participating in a workshop are encouraged to sign up for the workshop mailing list.

If you would like to receive emails from all of the workshops, you may sign-up for our umbrella mailing list for workshops. With the exception of the Inequality & Social Policy series, this list is subscribed to all of the workshops listed below. You can subscribe to the umbrella mailing list at:lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/sociology-all-workshops-list.

Seminar on Social Exclusion and Inclusion

The Seminar on Social Exclusion and Inclusion at the Center for European Studies invites speakers from both sides of the Atlantic to present research on a broad range of issues pertaining to the dynamics of exclusion and inclusion in Europe. This year, among other topics, we will discuss the relationship between urban space and politics, and look at beauty standards and exclusion in the modeling industry across Europe. The seminar is open to participants from across the university as well as from other institutions. In the Fall, we will meet once a month on Friday, from 2:15 to 4:00 pm.

Faculty Sponsors                                         Michèle Lamont, Myra Marx Ferree (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Jonathan Mijs (Boston University), and Alya Guseva (Boston University)  
Workshop Coordinator Mari Sanchez
Website https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/study-groups/seminar-on-social-exclusion-and-inclusion
Mailing List lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/exclusion-study-group-list
Email Contact Mari Sanchez
See also: Workshops List

SOC 3303 / GOV 3009 Research Workshop in Applied Statistics

The Applied Statistics Workshop meets all academic year, Wednesdays, noon-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers. Free lunch is provided.

Faculty Sponsors Matthew Blackwell, Finale Doshi-Velez, Kosuke Imai, Gary King, James Robins, Tyler VanderWeele, Christopher Winship, Xiang Zhou
Workshop Coordinator Shusei Eshima
Website           http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009
Mailing List lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/gov3009-l
Email Contact Shusei Eshima, Graduate Student
See also: Workshops List

SOC 3304 Culture and Social Analysis Workshop

This seminar is open to the public.

[ Seminar Website ]

The Culture and Social Analysis Workshop is a forum where social scientists studying culture come together to discuss their empirical research and reflect on the future of the field. The workshop provides budding scholars of culture with an opportunity to discuss their work in progress, interact with leading researchers in the field, and think through central theoretical and methodological issues in research on culture.

Since its inception in 2003—and increasingly so in recent years—the workshop has placed considerable emphasis on showcasing cross-national comparative research. This is both a function of the international orientation of the faculty organizers and the growing importance of comparative, global, and transnational research in cultural sociology. By training graduate students in rigorous comparative methods and sensitizing them to cross-national cultural heterogeneity, the workshop’s orientation closely aligns with the mission of the Weatherhead Center.

Faculty Sponsors Michèle Lamont, Ellis P. Monk, Jr.
Workshop Coordinators Elizabeth Sheprow, Catharina O’Donnell, and Rachel Kim
Website cultureworkshop.sociology.fas.harvard.edu
Mailing List lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/culture-workshop-list
Email Contact

Lisa Albert, staff member

SOC 3308 Economic Sociology Seminar (w/ MIT)

Inaugurated at the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1997, the Economic Sociology Seminar aims to be the home for cutting-edge economic sociology in the greater Boston social science research community. Since 2003, the seminar has been jointly run by faculty from the Sloan School's Economic Sociology Program and the Harvard Department of Sociology. Meeting at MIT and Harvard in alternating weeks during the academic year, presenters and participants represent a diverse array of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. What we share is a commitment to engage the array of research that has recently come under the heading of economic sociology and thereby to improve upon existing models of organizations, markets, and other key economic institutions.

Faculty Sponsors                         Frank Dobbin, Letian Zhang
Workshop Coordinators Marissa Combs and Clem Aeppli
Website

https://ess.sociology.fas.harvard.edu/

Calendar for MIT Meetings http://mitsloan.mit.edu/phd/program-overview/esp-seminars/
Mailing List

https://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/ess

Email Contact Marissa Combs and Clem Aeppli, Graduate Student

SOC 3309 Migration and Immigrant Incorporation Workshop

Members of the Harvard Migration and Immigrant Incorporation workshop share a common interest in international migration and the incorporation of immigrants into host societies. This broad topic includes questions of race and the integration of the second generation (the children of immigrants). While the majority of participants focus on the United States, the workshop includes and is open to researchers studying other immigrant-receiving countries. The primary purpose of the workshop is to circulate works-in-progress in order to elicit feedback and suggestions for improving scholarly work such as dissertation chapters or proposals, journal article submissions, interview schedules and conference papers. The workshop is home to a broad range of interests under the general rubric of immigration studies. It and its email list also serve as a venue to disseminate information about data sources and recent publications of interest to participants.

Faculty Sponsors Mary C. Waters
Workshop Coordinators Melissa Hernández Jasso and Bernadette Blashill
Website https://mii.sociology.fas.harvard.edu/
Mailing List lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/mii-workshop-list
Email Contact harvardmii@gmail.com

SOC 3313 Urban Theory and Data Lab

Professors Robert Sampson and Joscha Legewie are organizing the “Urban Theory and Data Lab” to support research by students and postdocs examining the urban condition in the 21st century. The emphasis is on the active discussion of theoretical and empirical research that is in progress, in addition to occasional discussion sessions on selected readings to be determined by the group.

Enrollment requires permission of the instructors. Select Thursdays from 3:45 to 5:45 pm.

Faculty Sponsors   Robert J. Sampson, Joscha Legewie
Email Contacts Robert J. Sampson, and Joscha Legewie

SOC 3315 Malcolm Wiener Center Inequality and Social Policy Seminar Series

A seminar series designed to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion of social science research on the causes and consequences of inequality and social policy, broadly defined. The seminar draws leading scholars to campus from the fields of economics, political science, sociology, and public policy to share their work on issues such as wage and labor market inequality, urban poverty and residential segregation, families and children, race and immigration, education, crime and criminal justice policy, political inequalities, and comparative welfare state institutions.

Faculty Sponsors  
Website http://inequality.hks.harvard.edu/seminar
Mailing List http://eepurl.com/KC6MX
Email Contact inequality@harvard.edu

SOC 3316 Politics and Social Change

Following a years-long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Politics and Social Change Workshop (PSC) returns in a moment where the global interconnectedness of political actors and the importance of their political decisions have perhaps never been clearer.

This seminar explores the study of politics and society in transnational and comparative perspective. How do nationalist ideologies gain power in an interconnected society? Why do certain political narratives succeed in some countries while failing in others? How do transnational linkages between social movements shape national and subnational outcomes? Our speakers explore a broad range of political actors and processes at the local, subnational, national, and transnational levels. By bringing together a community of scholars with expertise on a range of contexts and from a variety of disciplinary traditions, we build a shared understanding of identity, culture, and politics in all its nuances. We meet twice a month to discuss current research at the forefront of the study of politics.

Faculty Sponsors Jocelyn Viterna, Paul Chang
Workshop Coordinator  Clayton Covington, Catharina O'Donnell
Website

https://wcfia.harvard.edu/seminars/politics-social-change

Mailing List psc@lists.fas.harvard.edu
Email Contact

Clayton Covington, Graduate Student
Catharina O'Donnell, Graduate Student

SOC 3317 History, Culture and Society Workshop

The Workshop in History, Culture, and Society provides a forum for the exploration of new developments in historical social science, especially in the fields of Anthropology, Economics, History, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. The workshop's primary methodological goal is to initiate a discussion of what constitutes acceptable historical evidence in each of the social sciences. Its main substantive goal is to understand how the past influences the present. The workshop is open to students and faculty from all departments across the University as well as from other institutions.

Faculty Sponsors Orlando Patterson, Ya-Wen Lei
Workshop Coordinators Andy Keefe
Website http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/history-culture-society-workshop
Mailing List lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/hcs-workshop-list
Email Contact Jess Viator, faculty assistant

SOC 3321 Contemporary Studies of Race & Ethnicity

The Contemporary Studies of Race & Ethnicity (CSRE) workshop's purpose is to provide a forum to disseminate knowledge and facilitate dialogue among graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars working on or interested in research about contemporary studies related to race & ethnicity. Though the Sociology department hosts the workshop, we seek to bring scholars together across disciplines to explore topics such as ethno-racial hierarchies, racial attitudes, and intergroup relations, as well as the role of race in institutions, politics, and everyday life. The workshop will foster both a learning and collaborative space in which participants can circulate and garner feedback on works in progress, including dissertation chapters, proposals, journal article submissions, conference papers, and practice job talks.

Faculty Sponsors Ellis P. Monk, Jr., Lawrence D. Bobo
Workshop Coordinators Hannah Craig, Chelsea King, Mari Sanchez
Website https://csre.sociology.fas.harvard.edu/
Mailing List https://web.lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/lists/csre.lists.fas.harvard.edu/
Email Contact

Mari Sanchez Graduate Student

SOC 3323 Social Demography

The Social Demography Seminar at the Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The Social Demography Seminar thus welcomes presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health--including mortality, morbidity, and functional health--inequality, im/migration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes. The long-term goal is to build a broad and multidisciplinary community of social demographers at Harvard.

Faculty Sponsors                                          

Jason Beckfield, Lisa Berkman, Christina Cross, Elyse Jennings, Joscha Legewie, Daniel Schneider, and Xiang Zhou

Workshop Coordinator     Lesley Harkins, Program Assistant, 
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
Website https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population-development/events/social-demography-seminar/
Mailing List Contact Lesley Harkins at lharkins@hsph.harvard.edu
Email Contact Lesley Harkins

SOC 3326 / HBSDOC 4911 Work, Organizations, and Markets Seminar

The long-standing interdisciplinary research workshop on Work, Organizations, and Markets (WOM) brings together faculty and graduate students from several Harvard departments and programs in the social sciences that study organizational phenomena, especially the Sociology Department and the GSAS Joint Program in Organizational Behavior. Its subject matter includes all three levels of analysis of concern in organizational research: individual behavior and interaction in organizational settings; the structure and action of organizations as collectivities; and the characteristics of groups, networks, or populations of organizations. Participants seek both to understand why organizations are as they are, and to understand determinants of organizational effectiveness. The workshop aims to (a) provide a supportive environment for doctoral students to present and get feedback on their work, and (b) build a community of peers whose research covers topics in macro-OB / sociology. It welcomes research at all stages of development, from preliminary research proposals to first-pass data analyses to more polished job talks.

Faculty Sponsors Peter V. Marsden, Alexandra Feldberg (HBS)
Workshop Coordinators                   Marissa Combs and Emily Tedards
Website

https://womworkshop.sociology.fas.harvard.edu/

Mailing List lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/wom-workshop-list
Email Contact

Marissa Combs and Emily Tedards

SOC 3327 Contemporary Ethnography and Inequality Workshop

The Contemporary Ethnography and Inequality Workshop advances ethnographic work addressing social, economic, and political inequality. The workshop circulates, appraises, and critically evaluates research presented by leading scholars as well as works-in-progress by graduate students rigorously pursuing ethnographic inquiry and methods. The workshop is open to faculty and students from across the University, from nearby Boston and Cambridge universities, and throughout the country and globe, through our zoom workshop events. While regular attendance is the norm, visitors are welcome. Our workshop is supported by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Sociology, the Department of Anthropology, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We meet approximately twice a month on Thursdays from noon to 1:30 PM EST.

Faculty Sponsors Gabrielle Oliveira, David Showalter
Workshop Coordinators Joey Wallerstein
Website https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cei
Mailing List https://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/cei
Email Contact Joey Wallerstein