WVU Department of Sociology and Anthropology

09/02/2026

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology would like to congratulate Olivia Robinson, the recipient of the Ronald C. Althouse Honorary Scholarship! Olivia is an Honors senior from Waldorf, Maryland double majoring in Criminology and English, minoring in Philosophy

Olivia plans to attend law school in fall 2027 and hopes eventually to become a prosecutor in Southern Maryland. Her goal is to bring what she has learned about discretion, crime prevention, community-oriented policing, rehabilitation, and the social causes of crime into her work as an attorney.

Congratulations, Olivia!

08/19/2026

Recently published essay: "The Scientist Who Lived With Dozens of Children from the Pacific Islands" by Rachel Aviv who featured Kelly Watson in it! Congrats, Kelly!

Link to article:

Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for his work on a disease in Papua New Guinea. But his biggest experiment was on the children he took back to the U.S.

08/19/2026

Congratulations to third-year PhD student Tucker Seifert and Prof. Josh Woods on their recently published article, "Finding crime in a public health crisis: a comparative analysis of opioid news coverage in West Virginia and Vermont," in the International Journal of Drug Policy.

Find the article here:

08/13/2026

Congratulations to new faculty member, Dr. Darci Schmidgall, who just published an article in Criminology, one of the top-ranked journals in the field. The article is titled, "Christian nationalism, race, and contingent support for law enforcement: Results from two survey experiments.

Find it at

Research in the United States shows a strong link between right-wing Christianity and support for law enforcement. Yet, it remains unclear whether this support extends uniformly across contexts, whic...

07/06/2026

The West Virginia University and Marshall University combined 2026 Archaeological Field School was held this year from June 8 through July 3 at Jackson's Mill. June 27 was Public Archaeology Day where faculty and students shared their work and fun activities.

07/01/2026

Students from the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences are currently studying abroad in Spain as part of a faculty-led program directed by Professor Brewster. Supported by academic advisor Kathie Reilly, students are traveling through Madrid, Toledo, Valencia, and Barcelona while examining social problems through a cross-cultural lens. The course explores how Spain and the United States address issues such as education, immigration, homelessness, crime, substance use, and social welfare, providing students with firsthand exposure to the policies, programs, and institutions that shape responses to these challenges in different societies.

06/24/2026

Don't forget to come out this Saturday!

Want to learn about archaeology? Come out to Jackson's Mill on Saturday, June 27th!

06/15/2026

The Field School is underway! Don't forget you can come learn about archaeology at Jackson's Mill on Saturday, June 27th!

06/02/2026

Dr. Amy Hirshman's student, Emma Snyder, who presented their co-authored paper “Two Groups or One? Experimental Intra-Assemblage Ceramic Morphological Assessment from the Late Postclassic Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, México” at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA on May 2, 2026. Emma is a former RAP student who continued as a research assistant in Hirshman’s archaeology lab. She did a great job of presenting! Emma graduated this spring and will being a masters program in Public History in the Fall.

06/02/2026

During the WVU Undergraduate Research Symposium two SOCA students had the following presentations!

Maasila finished her second semester of the RAP program with a poster entitled “Not Just a Supporting Role: Reanalyzing Ceramic Support Fragments From Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan, Mexico”. This was a co-authored poster on supports from a historically important archaeological survey collection from Mexico.

Clark, finishing a second semester of research credits, presented “Sherds” of the Tarascans”, a co-authored poster on the occurrence of slip and certain decoration motifs on ceramic artifacts from the same historically important collection from the site of Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, México.