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The majority of graduate programs are NOT impacted by recent government announcements about tuition increases. PhD students from the rest of Canada will continue to pay Quebec fees. International PhD fees will see the same 3% increase as Quebec fees.

Sociology (PhD)

Program description.

The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Sociology offered by the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts is a research-intensive program that emphasizes interdisciplinary and comprehensive learning opportunities. The program's objective is to equip students with skills in critical thinking, data collection, and scientific communication to pursue professional opportunities in academia or industry.

The program may also be taken as one of the following options:

Gender and Women's Studies option : designed for student to focus on an interdisciplinary specialization in feminist, women's, and gender studies. The Ph.D. dissertation must be on a topic that significantly engages with issues of gender and/or women and/or feminism.

Population Dynamics option : provides graduate training in demographic methods (including life table analyses) and enhance students’ knowledge of critical population issues. As such, students will be required to take a course on demographic methods and an overview substantive course on the key population issues facing societies today.

Unique Program Features

• The Department is recognized as an exceptional place for learning and research and consistently ranks among the best in the world;
• Faculty members are award-winning researchers and teachers with a strong international focus;
• Graduates pursue both academic and non-academic careers in institutions ranging from the University of Chicago and Berkeley to Statistics Canada and CEGEPs.

University-Level Admission Requirements

• An eligible Bachelor's degree with a minimum 3.0 GPA out of a possible 4.0 GPA
• English-language proficiency

Each program has specific admission requirements including required application documents. Please visit the program website for more details.

Visit our Educational credentials and grade equivalencies and English language proficiency webpages for additional information.

Program Website

PhD in Sociology website

Department Contact

Graduate Program graduate.sociology [at] mcgill.ca (subject: PhD%20in%20Sociology) (email)

Available Intakes

Application deadlines.

Note : Application deadlines are subject to change without notice. Please check the application portal for the most up-to-date information.

Application Resources

• Application Steps webpage
• Submit Your Application webpage
• Connecting with a supervisor webpage
• Graduate Funding webpage

Application Workshops

Consult our full list of our virtual application-focused workshops on the Events webpage.

Department and University Information

Graduate and postdoctoral studies.

McGill sociology graduate studies await Alsaffar

Muslim student hopes she can return to Middle East and teach in a discipline currently not strongly represented on college faculties.

Saint Michael’s College student Dina Alsaffar ’20 says that learning more about the world and societies through sociology was a light bulb for her, and she wants to bring that light to people living in Middle Eastern countries, where sociology scholarship is less common than in North America.

Dina Alsaffar

Alsaffar has been accepted into a graduate school program at McGill University in Montreal, with a complete scholarship providing full funding for the duration of her four years there. In her words, she will be researching “how American Muslims navigate their lives in the west and how their experiences are influenced by gender, immigration, race, ethnicity and so on …There are a lot of different aspects to this type of research I want to do.”

In her research on this topic, Alsaffar draws on her own experiences growing up as a Muslim in Vermont, where the Muslim population is small.

“Vermont is very homogenous in its population,” Alsaffar explains. It’s common to experience microaggressions every now and then. I’ve been told my English is ‘surprisingly very good,’ I’ve also been called ‘exotic’ quite a number of times, and don’t get me started on how many times I’ve heard ‘no …. where are you FROM from’ … I think studying sociology here really helped me understand my own experiences and it provided me the right tools to navigate where my passions and interests lie.”

Alsaffar would hope to use the eventual doctorate that she has set her sights on to become a professor herself and bring more scholarship in sociology to the Middle East. “I lived in Kuwait for a while, and my mother is a math professor at the American University in Dubai, and when I went to visit, there was only one sociology professor in their entire school of arts and sciences.”

Alsaffar said she decided to apply to McGill because of its great reputation for research, large and well-regarded sociology department, and plethora of great opportunities. Though she applied to other schools as well, McGill ended up being her first acceptance in late January. Alsaffar was one of only 10 people accepted to the program she applied to, and that acceptance for her came with a full four-year scholarship.

“If I didn’t get into sociology here at Saint Michael’s I don’t know what I would have done,” Alsaffar says. “The sociology department here is small in comparison to other bigger schools, but that hasn’t been a hindrance in any way because we have really good professors here and I do better when I form connections with my teachers.” Alsaffar has nothing but kind words and appreciation for sociology Professors Vincent Bolduc and Robert Brenneman. “Professor Bolduc was the first sociology professor I ever had, and he inspired me to get into sociology in the first place. He always encouraged me and told me that I had good ideas,” she says. When deciding to apply to go to graduate school, Professor Bolduc told her “I wouldn’t recommend all people get PhDs in sociology, but you I would, because I know you can and you will do something with it.”

Alsaffar completed independent research with Professor Brenneman during the summer of 2019, focusing on race and ethnicity within her own Mosque community, and this research inspired her to continue working on related topics and to apply to graduate school to do that. “Professor Brenneman was really there for me throughout the whole research process—he encouraged me to apply for the VPAA summer research grant, he took the time to engage in an independent study with me, he helped me narrow down my ideas and figure out what exactly I wanted to focus on, and now I feel ready to go further in my interests when I go to McGill,” she says. “He’s been a big part of my decisions and without him I still wouldn’t know what I want to do, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten into McGill.” She thanks her professors for “having a lot of faith in me … they didn’t hold my hand, so to say, but rather they pushed me and challenged me to be better and I’m really thankful for that.”

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Graduate Program

Graduate program in sociology.

The Berkeley Sociology Graduate Program is the heart of our collective enterprise. Berkeley welcomes a wide diversity of students with far-ranging research interests and equips them with the sociological training, resources, and supportive community necessary to succeed in academia and beyond. Students who come here find a graduate program that has been carefully designed to offer them a rich and complete sociological education, while simultaneously allowing space and incentives to explore and develop their original ideas. 

Factors distinguishing our graduate program from others nationwide include: 1) our rigorous training in general social theory, 2) our emphasis on public sociology and social justice, and 3) our embeddedness in a vibrant interdisciplinary community. Our emphasis on social theory is demonstrated by our required graduate theory sequence, elective theory courses, qualifying examination in theory, and teaching opportunities within Berkeley’s undergraduate theory sequence. As a department, we also maintain an abiding focus on public sociology and offer a number of fellowships, grants, and awards for students pursuing research that advances social justice. Finally, beyond the department, many students and faculty engage with university-wide institutes and clusters including the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Institute of Governmental Studies, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, the Latin America research cluster, and many others.

Students admitted to Berkeley sociology receive a competitive funding package which includes six years of full support (including tuition and a living stipend) through a combination of fellowships and teaching, with many opportunities to secure funding past year six. Additionally, students are mentored in the skills needed to secure nationally competitive fellowships. In the past dozen years, Berkeley graduate students were awarded nearly one-quarter of the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships in Sociology (53 of 226), almost double that of any other program. In addition, our students support their research with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Graduate Student Program, and more.  They also receive funding for their dissertation research from the National Science Foundation, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

Berkeley graduate students receive mentorship to publish widely and influence the field. In the 24 years that the American Sociological Association has awarded an annual prize for the best dissertation in sociology, Berkeley graduate students have won a quarter of the time (6), far more than any other department. The “News” section of this site details some recent graduate student publications. Following completion of their Ph.D.s, Berkeley graduate students frequently end up publishing their dissertations as books. For example, the students who finished from 2000 through 2007 currently have 34 books published or in press.

Training in our department has prepared many of our graduates to obtain research and teaching positions in research-oriented universities; recent graduates currently hold faculty positions at Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Chicago, Northwestern, UCLA, Columbia, Cornell, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCSF, UCSC, Syracuse, USC, Arizona, Washington, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, MIT, Georgetown, Boston U, SUNY Albany, UMass Amherst, William and Mary, Tufts and Oregon. Other students have taken jobs at more teaching-oriented schools, such as the Cal State campuses, Oberlin, Wellesley, Barnard, Boston College, Wesleyan and Sarah Lawrence.  Outside the US, students have taken jobs at McGill (Montreal), University College (Dublin), Universidad Carlos III (Madrid) and Tsinghua (Beijing).  A smaller but significant number have pursued careers in research institutes, business, government, and nonprofits.

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• Edward Bell

Edward Bell, Professor

PhD, Sociology, McGill University

Edward Bell is a sociologist interested in the origins of political attitudes and behaviours, and in political movements. In addition to examining the traditional antecedents of political phenomena, such as class, gender, age, and ethnicity, his work seeks to integrate the notion of heritability into analyses of politics through the use of twin and family studies.

Areas of Specialization

• Political attitudes and behaviours
• Political sociology
• Political psychology
• Personality and politics
• Political movements

Selected Publications

• Edward Bell and Julie Aitken Schermer. (2023). " Finite disappointment, infinite hope? The association between political orientations and sources of hope ." Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, 4.
• Edward Bell, Alan Bryman, and Steven Kleinknecht. (2022). Social Research Methods (Sixth Canadian Edition) . Don Mills: Oxford University Press.
• Edward Bell, Christopher Marcin Kowalski, Philip Anthony Vernon, and Julie Aitken Schermer. (2021). “ Political hearts of darkness: The Dark Triad as predictors of political orientations and interest in politics .” Behavioral Sciences, 11.
• Edward Bell, Christopher T. Dawes, Aaron Weinschenk, Rainer Riemann, and Christian Kandler. (2020). “ Patterns and Sources of the Association between Intelligence, Party Identification, and Political Orientations. ” Intelligence, 81.
• Aaron Weinschenk, Christopher Dawes, Christian Kandler, Edward Bell, and Rainer Riemann. (2019). “ New Evidence on the Link Between Genes, Psychological Traits, and Political Engagement. ” Politics and the Life Sciences, 38.

Contact Information

Edward Bell Department of Sociology Room 5322, Social Science Centre

• 519-661-2111 ext. 84611
• [email protected]

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Graduate School Admission Results

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Department of Sociology

Zoua m. vang.

(Sociology, November 2008) Thesis Title: Irish and American Ghettos: Race and Residential Segregation in Ireland and the United States Committee: Mary C. Waters (chair), Orlando Patterson, Robert J. Sampson, Dorren McMahon Initial Placement : NSF Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Population Studies Center, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania Current Position:   Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, McGill University

I received my BA in Sociology and Psychology (1999) from the University of Pennsylvania, and MA (2004) and PhD (2008) in Sociology from Harvard University. I spent two years as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania where I acquired additional training in racial/ethnic health disparities and maternal child health. I am an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Sociology and an Associate Member of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McGill University. I am also the founding Director of the Indigenous Maternal Infant Health & Well-being (IMIHW) Lab at McGill.

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Alumni position type, early placement (alumni only), international position (alumni only), phd degree program (grad and alumni only), graduate degrees awarded (for alumni profiles only).

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DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Megan whitaker selected as brady scholars program graduate fellow.

May 10, 2024

Congratulations to Megan Whitaker! She has been selected by the  Brady Scholars Program in Ethics and Civil Life to serve as one of four Graduate Fellows.  During her three year term, Megan will mentor a cohort of undergraduate students as they discuss civic engagement and complicated ethical questions while learning how to be practically engaged citizens of Evanston.