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Announcing the Winners of the 2025 Law & Society People’s Choice Podcast Award

May 14, 2025
This spring, students in the Sociology Department's Law & Society course took on a unique challenge: work in teams to closely examine a pressing issue in U.S. law and society, then bring it to life through a compelling, publicly accessible podcast. Each group chose a specific...

Professor Almeida Receives 2025 Senate Award for Distinguished Graduate Teaching and Mentorship

May 9, 2025
We are proud to announce that Dr. Paul Almeida has been awarded the 2025 Senate Award for Distinguished Graduate Teaching and Mentorship, one of the highest honors recognizing outstanding contributions to graduate education at UC Merced. Dr. Almeida’s 15-year trajectory of excellence in...

Sociology Graduate Program Debuts Strongly in U.S. News Rankings

April 30, 2025
Only 10 years after it began, the Ph.D. program in UC Merced’s Department of Sociology made an impressive debut in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings of graduate-level offerings. The Sociology graduate program tied for No. 64 nationally, sharing the position with UC Riverside, Temple...

Sociology Ph.D. Student Examines Why Workers Protest in El Salvador

April 25, 2025
UC Merced Sociology graduate student Luis Rubén González Márquez has a new first-authored article titled “The Glocal Foundations of Threat-Driven Labor Resistance to Authoritarian Capitalism,” published by UC Press in the Sociology of Development journal with his advisor, Professor Paul Almeida....

Wildfires Hit Latino Middle Class

April 2, 2025
Sociology professor, Dr. Daisy Reyes, has published an op-ed in De Los highlighting the struggles of first-generation Latinx college graduates in the aftermath of the recent L.A. wildfires. Dr. Reyes examines the stories of individuals like Sylvia Zamora, a first-generation college graduate and...

Emily Ernst Co-Authors Paper on Climate Change and Reproductive Decision-Making

March 28, 2025
Sociology graduate student Emily Ernst has coauthored a paper titled "In-Conceivable Futures: Climate Change and Reproductive Decision Making Among Childfree North Americans" in Social Currents. The study explores how individuals in North America navigate reproductive decisions amidst the...

Charlie Eaton Publishes Op-Ed in The New York Times

March 25, 2025
Professor Charlie Eaton has published a thought-provoking op-ed in The New York Times titled “$15 Billion Is Enough to Fight a President.” In his piece, Professor Eaton argues that universities with large endowments must step up to defend academic freedom and free speech in the face of...

New Study Sheds Light on Climate Action Participation Among Working-Class Youth of Color

February 24, 2025
Professor Paul Almeida and graduate students have published the article "Working-Class Youth Participation in Climate Action: Networks, Civic Experience, and Equity" in npj Climate Action. The article explores the factors that drive individual participation in climate action, with a...

New Study Examines the Influence of Financiers on University Boards

February 23, 2025
Associate Professor Charlie Eaton’s latest paper, "Elite Embeddedness: The Rise of Financiers on University Boards as Parallel Social Organizations", published in Socio-Economic Review, explores how private equity and hedge fund managers have increasingly gained trustee positions at...

Melissa Quesada Completes Dissertation on Social Forces and Networks Guiding Latines into Teaching

February 14, 2025
Melissa Quesada has successfully defended her dissertation, titled "Just Be a Teacher: How Social Forces and Networks Guide Latines into Teaching." Her committee included Irenee Beattie (chair), along with Professors Laura Hamilton, Daisy Reyes, and Glenda Flores (from UC Irvine)....