The University of California, Santa Barbara provides a unique environment for graduate work in Sociology. Situated on a stunning peninsula on the Pacific Ocean, the university offers a top-tier sociology program with world-renowned faculty. Graduate students benefit from rigorous training in theory and methods and in diverse substantive research areas, including: Conversation Analysis; Culture; Global Studies; Gender and Sexualities; Race, Ethnicity, and Nation; and Social Movements. UCSB’s sociology graduate students have gone on to top jobs at other universities and numerous research, policy, and activist professions. Recent Placements of Graduates.
Graduate study in the UCSB Sociology Department is characterized by several distinctive features. Students have the opportunity to work closely and collaboratively with world-class faculty who are engaged in cutting-edge scholarship. The Department is especially renowned in the areas of gender, sexualities, and feminist theory, the sociology of culture, race and ethnicity, Latina and Latino studies, globalization and its effects, social movements, conversation analysis, and social networks. Students are offered strong training in theory and qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and they are encouraged to range broadly across fields and methodologies. The UCSB campus is known for breaking down traditional disciplinary boundaries, and interdisciplinarity is actively practiced by Sociology faculty and students. Many of our students take seminars, find research opportunities, and connect with additional mentors in other departments. The political relevance of scholarship is widely valued here, and the Sociology Department has a strong tradition of mixing scholarship with activism and concerns for social justice.