Welcome message from the Department Chair, Alejandro Portes

The Department of Sociology at Princeton University has an international reputation for the quality of its teaching and research. Its approximately 20 full-time faculty have interests that span the sociology of culture, economic sociology and organizations, migration and development, social demography, social inequality, regional and comparative studies, urban ethnography, and advanced statistics. There are about 40 graduate students in residence and 80 undergraduate majors. Regular workshops and seminars in culture and inequality, economic sociology, religion and public policy, and social demography, together with supervised independent research projects among junior and senior majors, facilitate close student-faculty interaction.

Founded in 1961, the Princeton Sociology department has evolved over the years to become one of the premier teaching and research units in the discipline. Firm and generous University support has allowed the department to attract a number of senior scholars in recent years, while the maturation of junior faculty into seasoned and recognized scholars have added to its internal stability and external visibility.

This record allows us to compete effectively with sister departments at larger universities for research resources, external recognition, and prospective students. Simultaneously, we have endeavored to preserve an atmosphere of collegiality and mutual knowledge based on a mid-size faculty and limited cohorts of new graduate students. Limited size, high quality, and close relations have in turn created a number of synergies and positive multipliers, exemplified by numerous collaborative faculty projects and frequent co-authorship by students of publications stemming from faculty research.

The undergraduate program too has benefited greatly from this context. All courses for the major are taught by regular faculty members, and given close mutual knowledge and interaction in the faculty, our concentrators are easily exposed to the ideas and research projects of its members. As in the case of the graduate program, we endeavor to keep the number undergraduates to a level commensurate with the department’s mid-sized faculty. Unlike the common situation in larger academic units, this enables us to provide faculty advice to all of our concentrators. This is especially valuable during the last two years of college, as Princeton requires all students to complete a junior paper and a senior thesis.

The department owes much of its progress to its close adherence to the maxim: “build on strength”. It has not sought to cover all areas of the discipline, a goal that given our size could only be poorly achieved, but has attempted to focus on a few links and build centers of excellence in them. Cultural sociology, demography, international development, economic sociology, ethnographic methods, immigration and ethnicity, urban sociology, religion, and social stratification are the substantive fields where Princeton sociology excels, and where it hopes to continue doing so in the future.