Research Areas

The UCSC Sociology Department faculty locate themselves in various interdisciplinary sites, with each faculty member’s research and teaching focused on at least two of the following five broad areas that are defining of our department. These themes are also reflected in our approach to academics and the work of our affiliated research centers and initiatives. Learn more about our approach to research and see our latest publications and research news on our Research overview page.

Political economies and ecologies

Drawing on the tradition of radical political economy in sociology and our department’s historic commitment to embedding this approach in an environmental framework, this area emphasizes critical analysis of capitalism and racial capitalism, socialism and social justice, as well as more applied research in labor, housing, and environment. We aim to transcend common binaries between nature/society and urban/ecology and to engage in active field-building in the established and emerging areas of environmental sociology, urban political ecology, environmental and climate justice, critical sustainabilities, Black ecologies, more-than-human ethnographies, and eco-socialism.

Alison Alkon

Title
- Associate Teaching Professor of Community Studies, Affiliate faculty, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

Hillary L Angelo

Title
- Associate Professor

Christopher Benner

Title
- Professor

Lindsey L Dillon

Title
- Associate Professor

Deborah Gould

Title
- Professor and Chair

Miriam Greenberg

Title
- Professor

Julie H Guthman

Title
- Distinguished Professor Emerita

Camilla A Hawthorne

Title
- Associate Professor

Naya Jones

Title
- Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program

Michael A. McCarthy

Title
- Director of Community Studies

Steven McKay

Title
- Professor

Madhavi Mohan Murty

Title
- Associate Professor

Jennifer E Reardon

Title
- Professor and Sociology Undergraduate Education Chair

Zoe Zhao

Title
- Assistant Professor

Space, place, and mobility

Drawing from many of our faculty’s doctoral training in geography and spatially-oriented sociology programs, this area builds upon a range of critical approaches to human geography, including cultural geography, urban and regional geography, Black geographies, geographies of migration, and critical geographic information system (GIS) studies. This theoretical and methodological training informs a range of interdisciplinary work in the politics of difference, migration studies, urban studies, and diaspora and border studies. Particular focus is paid here to questions of displacement, exclusion, and mobility at multiple scales—from city-regional to the national and planetary scale.

Hillary L Angelo

Title
- Associate Professor

Amy Marie Argenal

Title
- Assistant Teaching Professor of Community-Engaged Research and Learning

Christopher Benner

Title
- Professor

Lindsey L Dillon

Title
- Associate Professor

James Battle

Title
- Associate Professor

Miriam Greenberg

Title
- Professor

Julie H Guthman

Title
- Distinguished Professor Emerita

Camilla A Hawthorne

Title
- Associate Professor

Naya Jones

Title
- Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program

Steven McKay

Title
- Professor

Juan Pedroza

Title
- Associate Professor and Sociology Graduate Education Chair

Jennifer E Reardon

Title
- Professor and Sociology Undergraduate Education Chair

Culture, knowledge, and power

This area brings media and cultural studies alongside science and technology studies to address questions of cultural/knowledge production, representation, and ideology, while also investigating the complex ways that the structural is subjectivized, embodied, contested, and culturally reproduced. Our work incorporates interdisciplinary theory and methods informed by fields including science and justice, law and society, media and cultural politics, critical data studies, critical analysis of medicine/health, critical analysis of education, critical analysis of erotic labor, critical race and ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, Indigenous studies, the politics of affect and embodiment, and science, technology, medicine and society.

Hillary L Angelo

Title
- Associate Professor

Amy Marie Argenal

Title
- Assistant Teaching Professor of Community-Engaged Research and Learning

Julie Bettie

Title
- Associate Professor

Lindsey L Dillon

Title
- Associate Professor

James Battle

Title
- Associate Professor

Deborah Gould

Title
- Professor and Chair

Miriam Greenberg

Title
- Professor

Julie H Guthman

Title
- Distinguished Professor Emerita

Camilla A Hawthorne

Title
- Associate Professor

Naya Jones

Title
- Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program

Rebecca A London

Title
- Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director Campus + Community

Michael A. McCarthy

Title
- Director of Community Studies

Jaimie Morse

Title
- Assistant Professor

Madhavi Mohan Murty

Title
- Associate Professor

Jennifer E Reardon

Title
- Professor and Sociology Undergraduate Education Chair

Alicia Rose Riley

Title
- Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program

Zoe Zhao

Title
- Assistant Professor

Publics, policy, and law

We approach policy and law as objects of study while also producing research that may itself inform policy, legal changes, and practice in fields like critical human rights, legal studies, public health, education and youth studies, and studies of housing, (im)migration, and labor. We emphasize how power relations, historic inequities, and political struggles across lines of race, class, gender, citizenship status, and other forms of difference have shaped the ways in which policy and law are imagined, enacted, and experienced. We share our work with planners, policymakers, and professional bodies and collaborate with community groups, non-profits, and activist organizations whose members are subject to and impacted by policy and law in a variety of ways.

Amy Marie Argenal

Title
- Assistant Teaching Professor of Community-Engaged Research and Learning

James Battle

Title
- Associate Professor

Hiroshi Fukurai

Title
- Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies

Miriam Greenberg

Title
- Professor

Camilla A Hawthorne

Title
- Associate Professor

Naya Jones

Title
- Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program

Rebecca A London

Title
- Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director Campus + Community

Jaimie Morse

Title
- Assistant Professor

Juan Pedroza

Title
- Associate Professor and Sociology Graduate Education Chair

Jennifer E Reardon

Title
- Professor and Sociology Undergraduate Education Chair

Alicia Rose Riley

Title
- Assistant Professor & Core Faculty in Global and Community Health Program

World building, political imaginaries, and alternative futures

Many of our faculty are drawn to broader questions about the processes and practices of social change and social reproduction, the affective dimensions of political life, utopian/dystopian thought and practice, radical traditions and possibilities, and the making and unmaking of movements, institutions, and other political collectivities. Our broad range of theoretically engaged work explores the potential for social change in ways that are speculative and often experimental. It also provides space to look critically and creatively at social movements and social change efforts themselves, commonly from a trans-historical and international perspective.