About us
The Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University is a strong, nationally-ranked graduate program with a productive faculty and excellent placement record for our PhD students. In the most recent U.S. News and World Reports rankings, our Sociology doctoral program ranked 17th over all and 10th in the specialties of stratification and population among all programs in the U.S. We are among the elite public schools, ranking 8th among public university Sociology graduate programs in the U.S.
Our department covers virtually all domains of the discipline, methodological approaches, and interdisciplinary research. Our faculty research productivity, as measured by peer-reviewed articles and scholarly books, is in the top 2% among all sociology departments. In 2020, our faculty jointly earned almost $2 million in external research funds. These grants are used to collect/create novel data, produce cutting edge research and fund graduate students.
We are a large department, with 36 faculty, 10 staff members and almost 70 graduate students. Our department offices are in Townshend Hall, in the center of the Columbus campus, making it easy to access all of the resources available at Ohio State.
While our faculty and graduate students cover a wide array of sociological research topics, areas of particular strength within the department include (in alphabetical order):
- Community and Urban Studies
- Criminology
- Demography (Migration/Immigration, Fertility, Mortality)
- Education and Work/Labor Markets
- Family and Children/Youth
- Political/Social Movements
- Population Health/Medical Sociology
- Social and Economic Inequality