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Research & Work

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General Admission Contact
The New School for Social Research
Office of Admission
72 Fifth Avenue, 1st floor
New York, NY 10011
212.229.5600 or 800.523.5411
SocialResearchAdmit@newschool.edu

Admission Liaison
Aria Vaghayenegar

Department of Sociology
6 East 16th Street, 9th floor
New York, NY 10003
212.229.5737 x3125
Fax: 212.229.5595

Mailing Address
79 Fifth Avenue, 9th floor
New York, NY 10003

Chair
Virag Molnar

Senior Secretary
Charles Whitcroft

Student Advisor
Position to be filled

2026-27 Sociology Student Handbook

Faculty and students in the Department of Sociology use ethnographic, historical, and interpretive inquiry to explore significant social issues in local, national, and transnational contexts. By combining theory with critical engagement, their ideas help shape the modern world and engage academic communities around the globe.

Recent Faculty Books

Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York
Terry Williams, Professor of Sociology 
Columbia University Press, 2024

Violence and Representation in the Arab Uprisings
Benoit Challand, Associate Professor of Sociology
Cambridge University Press, 2023

The Soft City: Sex for Business and Pleasure in New York City
Terry Williams, Professor of Sociology
Columbia University Press, 2022

The Vanishing Indian Upper Class: Life History of Raza Mohammed Khan
Terry Williams, Professor of Sociology (co-author)
Anthem Press, 2020

Edo to Avatars: Watakushi tachi no uchinaru diversity (Edo and Avatars: In Search for our Internal Diversity)
Eiko Ikegami, Walter A. Eberstadt Professor Emerita of Sociology (co-author)
Asahi Shuppan, 2020

Jiheisho to iu chisei (Autistic Intelligences)
Eiko Ikegami, Walter A. Eberstadt Professor of Sociology
NHK Shuppan, 2019

Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an After-Hours Club
Terry Williams, Professor of Sociology
Columbia University Press, 2019

On Ethnography
Terry Williams, Professor of Sociology (co-author)
Polity Press, 2018

The Adventures of the Constituent Power: Beyond Revolutions?
Andrew Arato, Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor in Political and Social Theory
Cambridge University Press, 2017

The Struggle for Influence in the Middle East: The Arab Uprisings and Foreign Assistance
Benoit Challand, Associate Professor of Sociology (co-editor)
Routledge, 2017

Hyper-Worlds: Kyokan shiau jiheisho avatars (Hyper-World: Autistic Avatars in Virtual World)
Eiko Ikegami, Walter A. Eberstadt Professor Emerita of Sociology
NTT Shuppan: 2017

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence
Rachel Sherman, Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology
Princeton University Press, 2017

What Is an Event?
Robin Wagner-Pacifici, University in Exile Professor Emerita of Sociology
University of Chicago Press, 2017

Post Sovereign Constitution Making: Learning and Legitimacy
Andrew Arato, Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor in Political and Social Theory
Oxford University Press, 2016

Stories Without Borders: The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event
Julia Sonnevend, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications
Oxford University Press, 2016

Harlem Supers: The Social Life of a Community in Transition
Terry Williams, Professor of Sociology
Palgrave, 2016

Teenage Suicide Notes: An Ethnography of Self Harm
Terry Williams, Professor of Sociology
Columbia University Press, 2016

Recent Dissertations

2024

Nuri Can Akin
“'We Have Never Been Secular': Unveiling the Complexities of Turkish Secularization (1923–1945)"

Melissa Amezcua
"Imagining and Instituting the People: Dilemmas of Popular Sovereignty during Cardenismo (1934–1940)"

Francisco David Gonzalez Camelo
"Decolonial Citizenship and the Making of the Democratic State in Colombia"

Emmanuel Guerisoli
"The Coloniality of Emergency: The External Sovereign, Differential Regimes of Law, and the Racialization of Muslims in the War on Terror"

Chih-Yuan Lin
"Cerberus in Front of Treasure: A Comparative Study of the Credit Rating Systems of the U.S. and China"

Marcio Jose Macedo
"Hip Hop SP: The Creation of Peripheral Culture in Brazil (1984–2003)"

Santiago Ismael Mandirola
"The Making of Financial Inclusion: Payments, Credit, and Technology in Latin American Socio-Economic Life"

Fania Noel
"Noir in Place: Black Politics, Racialized Gender, and Space in Contemporary France"

Felippe Ramos
"Democracy and Populism: The (In)Tense Relation between Freedom and the Pursuit of the Will of the People"

Ivan Rubenstein-Gillis
"Reclaiming Ethical Agency: A Zygmunt Bauman-Inspired Evaluation of Contemporary Anti-Consumerism"

Agnes Szanyi
"IT DOESN’T MEAN WE SHOULD SHUT UP! Moral Conflicts in the New York Art Activist Scene, 2011–2023"

2023 

Ariana Ashley Ali
"The Solidarity Project: How Stigma Weakens Democratic Participation and the Importance of a Caring Democracy in Black Liberation Movements as a Potential Solution"

Tania R. Aparicio Morales
"The Making of Organizational Models and Collective Action in the Production of Film Curatorship"

Bahareh Ebne Alian
"Rationalities of the Dual State in Iran"

Kiril Grigorov Glavev
"Sometimes You Wanna Go Where Everybody Knows You’re Gay: Examining the Role of Queer Nightlife Publics in Identity Construction and Cultural Production"

David Philip Janes
"Origami Networks: The Meaning and Social Power of Sadako’s Paper Cranes"

Sidra Kamran
"Work, Class Ambiguity, and Multiple Femininities: Women, Beauty and Retail Workers in Pakistan’s New Service Economy"

Aysegul Kayagil
"From ‘Arabs’ to ‘Afro-Turks’: Race in the Making of Hegemonic Turkishness"

Karolina Natalia Koziura
"Erasing Violence: Political Contests over the Recognition of the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–1933"

Marcio Jose Macedo
"Hip-Hop SP and the Creation of Peripheral Culture in Brazil (1984–2002)"

Robert J. Proverb Jr.
"Autism in Perpetual Motion: A Methodology for Examining Social Media Data via the Case of Autistic Influencers of Twitter, 2018–2019"

2022

Berfu Aygenç
"Reproduction of Nationhood: Citizenship and Immigration Policy in Turkey"

John Joseph Michalczyk III
"From Isolation to Inclusion: Reprioritizing Patient Care Through Peer Support"

Jussara Barbosa dos Santos Raxlen
"My Home Is Someone’s Workplace”: The Boundary Struggles between the Personal and Social in the Work of Home Care for the Elderly"

2021

Guillermina Altomonte
"Becoming Old: Independent Aging and Transitions in Elder Care in New York City"

Douglas De Toledo Piza
"At the Fringes of Legality: Chinese Mobilities in Uneven Geographies of Development"

Patrick L. Gilger
"Fashioning Religious Selves in a Secular Age"

Meredith Hall
"Properties of Color: How Corporations Came to Own the Visible Spectrum"

Changho Jo
"Making a Constituent People: The Indigenization of Apparent Externalities and Development of the Constitutional Regime in East Asia"

John Joseph Michalczyk III
"From Isolation to Inclusion: Reprioritizing Patient Care through Peer Support"

Carlos Federico Pineyro
"It Is Not about Being Nice. It’s about Being Fair.” Emotions, Organizing, and Collective Identity Building: The Case of the National Domestic Workers Alliance"

Jussara Dos Santos Raxlen
“'My Home is Someone’s Workplace': The Boundary Struggles of Home Care for the Elderly and Frail"

Zachary Von Sunderman
“Can a Man Condemn Himself?: The Existential Dilemmas of White Allyship"

2020

Yesenia Aponte-Melendez
"'I Don’t Look the Way Those People Look': Women, Social Class, and Prescription Opioid Misuse"

Fabiola de Lachica Huerta
"Shattering the Everyday, Rearranging the Ordinary: The Categories, Temporalities, and Spatial Dimensions of the Villas de Salvarcar Massacre"

Luis Jaime Tsukayama Cisneros
"Eating With the Heart: The Emergence of Imagined Commonality Through Food in Lima, Peru"

Tamsyn Laura Gilbert
"Bodily Interventions: The Art of Women’s Bodies in the Digital Sphere"

Lisa M. Lipscomb
"On the Cusp of Legitimacy: Professionalization in the Field of Astrology"

Tim Rosenkranz
"Nations as Destinations: Analyzing Tourist Source-Markets as Local Fields of Global Circulation"

2019

Manuela Badilla Rajevic
"Mnemonic Playgrounds for Mobilization: A Radical Turn in the Construction of Public Memory in Post-Dictatorship Chile"

Frederico Menino Bindi de Oliveira 
"Internationalization Alive: International Student Experiences, Higher Education Policy and the Imagination of Brazil in the Global Knowledge Economy"

Alissa Gayle Boguslaw
"Almost Sovereign: Independence and Indeterminacy in the New Republic of Kosovo"

Mario Hernandez
"Bushwick’s Bohemia: Art and Revitalization in Gentrifying Brooklyn"

Tyler J. Horan
"Adjoining Glass Castles: Privacy and Publicity in Corporate Social Media"

Mayuko Kawai
"Japanese Unamended Constitution: The Legacy of an Imposed Pacifist Sovereignty"

Zachary Bennett Metz
"The Intimacy of Enemies: The Power of Everyday Boundary Crossing and Transgressive Interactions to Transform Intractable Conflict"

Hasan Ertug Tombus
"Life-Cycle of a Populist: Populism and Its Trajectory in Turkey"

Zeyno Ustun
"Digital Dissidence and Internet Law: Mapping the Political Process of the Gezi Resistance and its Legal Aftermath"

Elizabeth Bianca Ziff
"The All-American Surrogate: Military Wives and Surrogates in the United States"

Our Work

Discover more about the innovative research and work of our students and faculty

What Is an Event?

What Is an Event?

Robin Wagner-Pacifici, University in Exile Professor of Sociology, discusses her new book on how we remember events

Take The Next Step

Notice of Nondiscriminatory Policy

The New School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.