Social Sciences (Faculty & Staff)

UC Berkeley Psychology and Economics departments Ranked No.1 by U.S. News

September 19, 2023

U.S. News college rankings

In its 2024 national rankings for best colleges, U.S. News and World Report ranked UC Berkeley Social Sciences departments of Psychology and Economics No. 1 for their undergraduate programs. Overall, UC Berkeley is once again the No. 1 public school in the country, tied with UCLA. In spring 2023, U.S. News ranked Berkeley Psychology No...

Berkeley Social Sciences announces new chairs and directors

September 11, 2023

Berkeley Social Sciences recently announced the appointments of 11 new department chairs and directors. They include:

Sabrina Agarwal Sabrina Agarwal, the new chair of the Department of Anthropology. Professor Agarwal’s research interests include bioarchaeology, biological...

UC Berkeley Social Sciences launches one-year Master of Computational Social Science program

September 18, 2023

Two UC Berkeley students and a laptop

UC Berkeley Social Sciences Dean Raka Ray announced today the launch of a new Master of Computational Social Science (MaCSS) program, which is now accepting applications for its inaugural cohort in Aug. 2024....

L&S Leads Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Awards

April 27, 2022

L&S Recipients of Distinguished Teaching Awards 2022The College of Letters & Science is well represented on the 2022 UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award list. L&S faculty earned four of this year’s five selections for the campus’s most prestigious honor for...

Berkeley Sociology creates endowment to honor Professor Emeritus Michael Burawoy

September 15, 2023

Professor Emeritus Michael Burawoy

UC Berkeley's Sociology Department recently received a $100,000 gift from alumna Suava Zbierski-Salameh to establish an endowment to support students in honor of ...

Most Californians oppose cash reparations for slave descendants, IGS Poll finds

September 12, 2023

California voters are broadly opposed to paying the state’s Black residents to compensate for the longstanding harms of slavery, with opposition extending across party lines, according to a new poll released by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

The IGS Poll found that 60% of Californians acknowledge the deep and continuing human damage caused by centuries of slavery and the segregation and persecution of Black people that continued long after slavery legally ended in 1865. But strong...

Social Sciences welcomes new faculty

August 24, 2023

Headshot of Tianna Bruno

Twelve new scholars have joined the Berkeley Social Sciences faculty as assistant professors in political science, anthropology, gender and women’s studies, sociology, history, ethnic studies, economics and geography. They bring passion, brilliance and commitment to the Social Sciences. Learn more about them ...

Berkeley history professor receives NEH grant for groundbreaking project on Istanbul's Greek Orthodox communities in the 19th and 20th centuries

August 15, 2023

UC Berkeley History Professor Christine Philliou has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a 3-year research project to create a comprehensive, public-facing website to build new types of knowledge and raise public awareness about Istanbul and its constituent Orthodox Christian communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. The project, titled "Visualizing...

UC Berkeley launches AI training program to address criminal justice system inequalities with support from $3M NSF grant

August 24, 2023

Working with technology

UC Berkeley researchers launched a pioneering interdisciplinary training program this week that will blend criminal justice and computer science in ways that experts say will help reduce long-standing, systemic inequities in the criminal legal system.

The program, called Computational...