Research Opportunities and Resources

The College offers a number of research and internship grants that can facilitate research, provide access to interesting research sites, and help make graduate school applications more competitive. For a listing of available opportunities please check here.

Students may also apply to the Dean’s Fund for research funding.

The sociology department will also make available ten small grants of $1,000 each to students conducting research associated with their BA project through a competitive process. Students will complete an application in the Autumn quarter. Their preceptors will recommend a set of applications to the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The DUS will review the applications and determine which merit funding.

The Summer Institute in Social Research Methods provides students with an immersive summer experience through a combination of classroom instruction, skills-building workshops, and hands-on research experience. Students will earn course credit, fulfill methods requirements, gain mentored experience as an RA on faculty research projects, and be eligible for academic year awards to continue RA work with faculty during the subsequent quarter. The deadline for applications is annual, sometime in the Winter Quarter. For information, go to https://voices.uchicago.edu/socscisummermethods/.

The Chicago Journal of Sociology (CJS) is a student publication supported by the University of Chicago Department of Sociology. Its mission is to showcase excellent undergraduate work in the social sciences, while giving student editors experience turning coursework into publishable academic articles.

CJS looks for papers that offer well formulated arguments about topics of sociological interest. It values clear, straightforward prose, careful citation, and a wide range of methodological approaches. For more information, please visit the journal's website here.

An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is tasked with protecting the rights and welfare of research participants. IRB’s ensure that your research project abides by ethical standards and will protect the wellbeing and confidentiality of your research subjects. Some sociological research does not require IRB approval for publication. However, given the sensitive nature of some observation and experimental settings, IRB approval is often required to publish your research.

While IRB approval is not required for fulfillment of undergraduate research projects, it is nonetheless worth considering, especially for students interested in pursuing publication of their projects in academic journals or students interested in applying to PhD programs.

Information about the IRB process at the University of Chicago can be found here. These training sessions can help you determine whether IRB is required for the publication of your research project and clarify the application process.