Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology - Social Networks

The Department of Sociology offers a Ph.D. program in Sociology. Particular emphases include social networks, gender, race/ethnicity, labor, social movements, family, migration, population, political economy, and states and global transformation. The program provides structured training in sociological theory, statistics, and qualitative and quantitative research methods. While the core of the program is sociological, it may also include an interdisciplinary component, incorporating links to anthropology, education, law, political science, history, criminology, and urban planning. Small entering cohorts ensure personalized attention for each student and guarantee access to professors, allowing for close mentorship relationships. Program faculty take diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to a variety of substantive issues, are committed to empirical research addressing central sociological issues, and are open to intellectual cross-pollination from cognate disciplines.
The University of California at Irvine is home to one of the premier research groups in the expanding field of social networks. With faculty in Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, Criminology, Law, and Society, Information and Computer Sciences, Statistics, Public Health, and the Graduate School of Management, UCI maintains a large and diverse community of network researchers with a wide range of substantive interests. The School of Social Sciences has had a Graduate Program in Social Networks for more than 30 years. With an active community and numerous opportunities for research collaborations, UCI is an ideal place to study social networks.

The Sociology Department is the hub of social network activity at UCI. We offer coherent graduate training in social networks, with a field specialization in social networks and a core curriculum covering theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, and substantive applications. Through the Center for Networks and Relational Analysis (http://lakshmi.calit2.uci.edu/cnrawe host the UCI Social Network Research Group weekly meetings /) where graduate students and faculty discuss their on-going research projects. Graduate training in the field is supported by faculty in several departments and the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences.

Current social network research by faculty and graduate students covers a wide array of substantive topics, including: organizational improvisation in response to disasters, socio-spatial features of networks, effects of economic and social transformations on social networks, social networks of immigrants, global city networks, on-line social networks, international trade networks, network affects on health behaviors, residential segregation, crime and gang networks, animal social networks, and neighborhood networks, to name a few. UCI was founding home to the flagship journal in the field, Social Networks. In recent years the social network group has hosted a number of events including the annual one-day Workshop on Social Network Analysis for UCI graduate students.

Hold a bachelor's degree (or equivalent) from a recognized academic institution with degree standards equivalent to those of the University of California
Have a minimum cumulative undergraduate GPA of 3.0
TOEFL iBT minimum score of 80
IELTS - An overall minimum score of 7.0 for admission, with a score of no less than 6.0 on any individual module.