Welcome to the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
Sociology begins with a deceptively simple idea: much of what we experience as personal is also social. Our opportunities, identities, relationships, and everyday experiences take shape within institutions, communities, cultures, and systems of inequality. Sociology gives us the tools to make those connections visible—and to ask how the social world came to be organized as it is, why some arrangements persist, and how they can change.
These questions feel especially important at a time when we are confronting profound social, political, economic, and environmental change. Debates about inequality, race and racism, migration, health and disability, crime and punishment, political polarization, work, technology, and climate change are part of everyday public life. They are complicated questions, and sociology teaches us to resist simple answers. It asks us to look carefully at evidence, to think critically about assumptions, and to understand how individual experiences connect to broader social patterns and institutions.
That is the kind of sociology we strive to teach and practice at UTM.
Our department brings together scholars working across a wide range of areas, including law, criminology and criminal justice; race, colonialism and Indigeneity; health and disability; gender and sexuality; immigration; politics and social movements; culture; organizations; environmental sociology; and social inequality. What connects this diverse work is a shared commitment to understanding social life systematically and to producing research that contributes to important intellectual and public conversations.
Our students are central to that intellectual community. Through our programs in Sociology and Criminology, Law & Society, students encounter different theoretical perspectives, learn how sociologists collect and evaluate evidence, and develop the analytical skills needed to investigate complex social problems. They also have opportunities to move beyond the classroom by undertaking original research and communicating sociological ideas through research projects, ethnographic work, public sociology, podcasts, and other forms of scholarship.
For me, one of the most valuable things sociology can teach is how to become comfortable with complexity. Social institutions are powerful and durable, but they are not immutable. Inequalities can become deeply embedded in policies, organizations, and cultural expectations, yet history also shows us that people organize, institutions respond, and seemingly settled arrangements can change. Understanding both sides of that relationship—how social structures shape what people can do and how people, in turn, reshape institutions—is at the heart of sociological inquiry.
It is also why evidence matters. Sociology is a discipline built around asking questions that can be investigated, testing our assumptions against evidence, and being willing to revise our explanations when the evidence demands it. My hope is that students leave our programs not only knowing more about the social world, but also asking better questions about it.
Whether you are a prospective student encountering sociology for the first time, a current student developing your own research interests, a colleague or community partner, or simply someone interested in the work we do, I invite you to explore our department. Our programs are designed to provide students with rigorous intellectual training while helping them become thoughtful, engaged, and informed participants in the communities and institutions of which they are a part.
I am proud to serve as Chair of a department whose faculty, staff, and students approach the study of society with curiosity, seriousness, and a commitment to understanding the forces that shape our shared world. I look forward to what we will continue to learn from one another.
David Pettinicchio
Associate Professor & Chair
Department of Sociology
University of Toronto Mississauga