Public sociology is a subfield of the wider sociological discipline that emphasizes expanding the disciplinary boundaries of sociology in order to engage with non-academic audiences. It is perhaps best understood as a style of sociology rather than a particular method, theory, or set of political values. Since the twenty-first century, the term has been widely associated with University of California, Berkeley sociologist Michael Burawoy, who delivered an impassioned call for a disciplinary embrace of public sociology in his 2004 American Sociological Association (ASA) presidential address. In his address, Burawoy contrasts public sociology with what he terms "professional sociology", a form of sociology that is concerned primarily with addressing other academic sociologists.
Philip Green is an American political theorist and Sophia Smith Professor Emeritus of Smith College in Northampton, MA. An outspoken public intellectual, he is best known for his critiques of American liberal pluralism, beginning with a critique of American Cold War strategic policy based on massive nuclear deterrence and first-strike capability, to numerous recent writings about the retreat of representative democracy in the United States. His recent book, American Democracy: Selected Essays on Theory, Practice and Critique (2014), contains a compilation of many of those essays.
William Schneider is an American journalist. From 1990 to 2009, he served as CNN's senior political analyst. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow & Resident Scholar at Third Way, a Washington think tank. Schneider is also serving as the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy, and teaching at George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. He has also been a contributing editor to the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an American independent academic publishing company founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing company National Book Network based in Lanham, Maryland.
Joe Richard Feagin is an American sociologist and social theorist who has conducted extensive research on racial and gender issues in the United States. He is currently the Ella C. McFadden Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University.
Gabrielle Anne Kirk McDonald is an American lawyer and jurist who, until her retirement in October 2013, served as an American arbitrator on the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal seated in The Hague.
Michael P. Scharf is co-dean, Joseph C. Hostetler – BakerHostetler professor of law, and the director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Scharf is also co-founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), a non-governmental organization (NGO) which provides pro bono legal assistance to developing states and states in transition. Since 1995 PILPG has provided pro bono legal assistance to states and governments involved in peace negotiations, drafting post-conflict constitutions, and prosecuting war criminals. Since March 2012, Scharf has also been the producer and host of Talking Foreign Policy, a one-hour radio program aired on a quarterly basis on Cleveland’s NPR affiliate WCPN 90.3 ideastream.
Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly (1961) is a Canadian politics and public policy scholar at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where he is associate professor, co-director of the Local Government Institute, and director of the European Studies Program. He is editor of the international scholarly publication; Journal of Borderlands Studies (JBS), and executive secretary and treasurer of the international scholarly Association for Borderlands Studies.
Henry Julian Abraham was a German-born American scholar on the judiciary and constitutional law. He was James Hart Professor of Government Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He was the author of 13 books, most in multiple editions, and more than 100 articles on the U.S. Supreme Court, judicial appointments, judicial process, and civil rights and liberties.
Robert F. Almeder is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University. He is known in particular for his work on the philosophy of science, and has also written on the philosophy of mind, epistemology and ethics. He is the author of 24 books, including The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce (1980), Death and Personal Survival (1992), Harmless Naturalism: The Limits of Science and the Nature of Philosophy (1998), Human Happiness and Morality (2000), and Truth and Skepticism (2010).
Lawrence E. Susskind is a scholar of conflict resolution and consensus-building in urban planning. He is one of the founders of the field of public dispute mediation and is a practicing international mediator through the Consensus Building institute. He has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1971, where he is Ford Professor of Environmental Planning.
Mark A. Boyer is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut. He is a specialist in international relations theory. His recent scholarship analyzes governmental responses to climate change at the regional and local level. He has also investigated pedagogical methodologies.
Cecilia Ann Conrad is the CEO of Lever for Change, emeritus professor of economics at Pomona College, and a senior advisor to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She formerly served as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Pomona College and previously oversaw the foundation's MacArthur Fellows and 100&Change programs as managing director. She holds a B.A. Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status.
Rosemary O'Leary is Emerita Distinguished Professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and Emerita Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on public management, collaboration, conflict resolution, environmental and natural resources management, and public law. She is most acknowledged for her scholarship exploring dissent in public organizations, collaboration to improve public service, and the impact of courts on public administration.
William Vincent D'Antonio is an Italian-American sociologist and educator. His contributions, to these fields include 12 book publications and numerous articles published in professional journals and newspapers. He was the Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association for 9 years and the author of the first mass-selling Introductory Sociology textbook in the 1970s. He is known most recently for his research studying religion & family in the United States, with a focus on American Catholics, and is currently a senior fellow in the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies (IPR)(formerly the Life Cycle Institute) at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Henry Eugene Brady is an American political scientist specializing in methodology and its application in a diverse array of political fields. He was Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley from 2009–2021 and holds the Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy. He was elected President of the American Political Science Association, 2009–2010, giving a presidential address entitled "The Art of Political Science: Spatial Diagrams as Iconic and Revelatory." He has published academic works on diverse topics, co-authoring with colleagues at a variety of institutions and ranks, as well as many solo authored works. His principal areas of research are on political behavior in the United States, Canada, and the former Soviet Union, public policy and methodological work on scaling and dimensional analysis. When he became President of the American Political Science Association, a number of his colleagues and co-authors contributed to his presidential biography entitled "Henry Brady, Big Scientist," discussing his work and the fields to which he has contributed and has also shaped.
Kathryn Newcomer is an American Political Scientist, author and professor of public policy and public administration. She was previously the director of the George Washington University's Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
Kenneth George Young FAcSS FRHistS was a British political scientist and historian who was Professor of Public Policy at King's College London in its Department of War Studies. Earlier he was instrumental in the creation of the Department of Political Economy at KCL in 2010, and was its founding head of department.
Jonathan Wilkenfeld is an American political scientist and professor emeritus at University of Maryland, specialized in foreign policy, terrorism and simulation methodology in political science. He is the Founding Director of the International Communication and Negotiation Simulations Project.
Wendy J. Schiller is the Alison S. Ressler Professor of Political Science at Brown University. She is a Faculty Fellow at Brown's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, where she also serves as Director of the A. Alfred Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy. She was previously the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science.
