Social Science Departments

Graduate students in Maxwell's social science programs are trained to become innovative scholars and superb teachers, well grounded in the social, cultural, and historical aspects of their fields. Maxwell Ph.D. alumni are employed in colleges, universities, and other research-oriented institutions across the United States and abroad.

Academic departments in the social sciences are active participants in SU’s Future Professoriate Project, a structured preparation for students to develop their skills as teachers as well as scholars.

The Maxwell School offers master's and doctoral programs in the following disciplines. (Interested in a bachelor's degree program? Visit our page on Undergraduate Programs, which are offered via SU's College of Arts and Sciences.) 

Anthropology. The anthropology department offers doctoral training and mentoring in sociocultural studies, historical archaeology, and bioarchaeology. Departmental research and teaching strengths include language and power, religious systems, medical anthropology, the social use of space, local-level globalization, culture change, indigenous environmentalism, political conflict and peace-making, and social movements. Interdisciplinary ties within and without Maxwell enhance offerings in environmental topics, historical preservation, policy planning, international relations, and health-related subjects.

Economics. The economics department offers a selective graduate program with emphasis on applied and policy-oriented economics; this focus meshes with the public policy environment of the Maxwell School. The Ph.D. program is research-oriented and designed for those who want to conduct applied economics in higher education, government, international agencies, independent research organizations, or private business. Fields of specialization include public economics, labor economics, urban economics, international economics, and econometrics.

Geography. Graduate work in geography combines the development of theory with research on specific places and spatial processes. The curriculum emphasizes formative social and natural processes and the geographical contexts in which they operate, such as cities; regions; the world system; tropical, riverine, or arctic environments. Areas of particular specialization include culture, justice, and urban space; environmental science and landscape dynamics; gender, identity and citizenship; geographic information technology; globalization and regional development; nature, society, and sustainability; and political economy.

History. The department stresses its role as a bridging discipline between the humanities and the social sciences. It invites not only highly qualified applicants in history, but also those with backgrounds in other fields, such as literature, biographical studies, cultural studies, or the humanities. Graduate students are encouraged to develop a minor outside the department. Many dissertations in history combine social science research methods and humanities subjects.

Political Science. The program is designed to introduce students to both the intellectual content and research methods of political inquiry. The department’s teaching and research interests emphasize institutions and political processes rather than particular methodologies. Current department specialties include ideologies of globalization, legislative activism by state legislators, comparative democratization, citizenship, party polarization in Congress, class in American politics, international negotiations, identity and foreign policy, immigration, courts and constitutional law, and states’ coercive capacities.

Public Administration. Ph.D. only. The public administration department's professional-degree offerings are supplemented by a doctoral program for future scholars in the field. The Ph.D. prepares students for professional careers in teaching and research. Most graduates find faculty positions on campuses in the United States and around the world; some join think tanks or research centers.

Social Science. Ph.D. only. The Social Science Ph.D. program is a center of creative scholarship for students whose intellectual interests transcend the confines of a single discipline. With guidance from their faculty advisors, social science doctoral students develop their own programs of interdisciplinary study. The program was founded with the conviction that a broad interdisciplinary education better prepares scholars in the social and policy sciences than narrower, more specialized training in one of the traditional disciplines.

Master of Social Science. The M.S.Sc. program is a specially designed, limited-residency, distance-learning program. It features an interdisciplinary approach to broad social science problems based on a comparative analysis of the world’s major cultural areas. The curriculum pays special attention to issues of international studies and the foundations of major societies. M.S.Sc. students include many non-governmental organization officials, teachers, military personnel, government officers, journalists, and corporate executives involved in international business.

Sociology. The department takes an interdisciplinary approach to public sociology in order to understand, critique, and address structural and social inequalities. The Ph.D. program offers a unique three-course sequence in qualitative methods emphasizing ethnography, narratives, conversation analysis, life history, and in-depth interviewing while also providing excellent training in quantitative research design and statistics. Theory courses incorporate classical foundations of sociology, as well as more contemporary theory, including feminist, queer, and post-modernist voices. Research and teaching extend across a range of areas, including feminist methods and theory; health, aging, and the life course; immigration; education; organizations; and families.