Meet the 2016 ASA President: Ruth Milkman

Sarah Jaffe, Fellow, The Nation Institute

Ruth Milkman

For Ruth Milkman, being a sociologist is about doing research that speaks to the issues of the day. That mindset has led her to crisscross the country, from the East Coast to California and back again, to dig into historical archives to uncover the struggles of women workers during the Great Depression, to hang out in factories with autoworkers trying to save an industry being dismantled, to follow immigrant janitors as they disrupted an entire city, and to trace the beginnings of the Occupy Wall Street uprising. And now, it has led her to the presidency of the American Sociological Association.

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Executive Officer Hillsman to Retire in May 2016

ASA Execuitive Officer Sally Hillsman

Sally T. Hillsman has announced that she will retire from her position as Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association in May 2016. Since becoming the Executive Officer in 2002, she has overseen all the activities of the Executive Office, with special attention to public affairs, scientific publishing, and social science funding. She has championed the establishment of section-sponsored journals, including Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and Society and Mental Health, as well as Contexts and the new open-access journal, Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. Even with limited resources, she has slowly but steadily moved the ASA into the digital world, including establishing TRAILS, the ASA Job Bank, and an Annual Meeting mobile app. She has successfully raised the visibility and presence of sociology in the public eye from a booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival to congressional briefings on Capitol Hill and increased press coverage of sociological research. In addition to developing a successful Leadership Campaign to raise money to support the Minority Fellowship Program, she has worked to expand funding for sociology at the National Science Foundation, other federal agencies, and private foundations. She has also played a leadership role on research, education, and science policy issues, especially professional ethics and the protection of human subjects. As ASA representative, Hillsman has served on the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Social Science Associations and of the National Humanities Alliance. In recognition of her distinguished work on behalf of the advancement of social, economic, and political sciences, Hillsman was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011. Previously, she was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in recognition of her work on reform of the courts and the criminal justice system.

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Sociological Theory Welcomes New Editor Mustafa Emirbayer

Chad Alan Goldberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mustafa Emirbayer

The ASA journal Sociological Theory, which has prospered since 2009 under its superb outgoing editor Neil Gross, will remain in good hands with incoming editor Mustafa Emirbayer.

Emirbayer is one of the most prominent theorists working in the discipline today. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1989, taught at the New School for Social Research from 1991 to 1999, and since then has been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is currently Professor of Sociology. As a former chair of the ASA Theory Section (2010-2011), a recipient of the Lewis Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda-Setting (2010), and a contributor, consulting editor (2004-2008), and frequent reviewer for Sociological Theory, Emirbayer is eminently qualified to take the journal’s helm.

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Sociologists Take Windy City by Storm

Daniel Fowler and Catherine Turvey, ASA Public Information Office

Sociologists took the Windy City by storm in August as they gathered for the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). With 5,712 registrants, the meeting had the highest attendance of any meeting outside of New York or San Francisco and the fourth largest crowd ever.

The 2015 meeting was ASA’s first meeting in Chicago since 2002. “We had an outstanding turnout,” said ASA Executive Officer Sally T. Hillsman. “2015 ASA President Paula England’s dynamic program, centered around the theme ‘Sexualities in the Social World,’ contributed greatly to the widespread interest in the meeting. Additionally, Chicago is a wonderful city to visit anytime, but particularly during the summer— and our attendance reflects that fact.”

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