I’m a big believer in the power of public sociology to contribute to more informed and critical democratic discourse and to building a more just and equitable society. As others have noted, there are many forms of public sociology. My work in public sociology takes two forms. First, I believe strongly in the work of “academic translation,” or clearing up complex social scientific ideas and findings for a broader audience. I’m proud to say that my very first published article appeared in Contexts, the American Sociological Association’s public outreach magazine, and I continue that work now, editing Contexts‘ Trends section. I’m also an occasional blogger at ThickCulture and have written a few pieces for TheSocietyPages. I’ll feature here some of my work as well as other projects in public sociology that I think are promising. The second form of public sociology I do is in the classroom — the frontline of the discipline. I will also highlight here some of my students’ achievements and forms of civic engagement.

Public Engagement

Op-Eds

• Television news could benefit from additional context (Times-Union, April 30, 2015)
• Culture wars have a new turf (Times-Union, July 13, 2014)

Contexts

• The Year English Soccer Wasn’t For Sale
• A gap between soc classrooms and the field
• An Old Tool with New Promise
• Controlling the media in Iraq
• Empire of the Games
• The War Society

Selected Essays and Posts Elsewhere on the Web

• How much support for an American National Front?
• How the Internet Scooped Science (and What Science Still Has to Offer)
• What I Learned in the Midwest
• Epilepsy, Personally and Sociologically
• Understanding the Conservative Movement
• Calculating Obama’s Chances
• The Sociology of Silver

Some Projects I Admire

• TheSocietyPages, of course
• SocArXiv
• Sociological Images
• Give Methods a Chance podcast
• Family Inequality
• The New Inquiry — not exclusively sociology, but still

Students

Visit The Sporting Life, a digital exhibit of objects from the permanent collection of the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibit was curated by Prof. Andrew Lindner‘s Fall 2015 Sociology of Sport class in the Department of Sociology at Skidmore College.

Award Recipients

• Ryan Larson. 2013. Second Place in the Midwest Sociological Society’s Undergraduate Student Paper Competition for “Fear and Loathing in Minnesota: A Multilevel Analysis of Factors Impacting Crime Fears in Minnesota.”
• Matt Gantz. 2012. First Place in the Sociologists of Minnesota’s Undergraduate Student Paper Competition for “Connecting Sociality and Professionalism: An ethnographic analysis of relationships among Scottish firemen.”