Dr. Anne Shlay Joins GSU Sociology as Our New Chair

Professor Anne B. Shlay will become our new department chair beginning July 1, 2015. Dr. Shlay is a distinguished urban sociologist with long standing interests in the effects of social institutions on inequality, particularly through their disparate shaping of spatial patterns within cities, states and nations. She has held faculty positions at Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Temple Universities, as well as done work within the non-profit housing research sector. Her new book, with co-author Gillad Rosen, entitled Jerusalem: The Spatial Politics of a Divided Metropolis (Polity) is forthcoming in May. This book is not only very timely, but one which has been the subject of stellar pre-release reviews as well. “GSU Sociology is a talented department with a reputation for being collaborative, and having great undergraduate and graduate students, so I think my new job will be fun and rewarding. I am very exciting about this opportunity, says Shlay.”

Dr. Shlay goes on to say that “An important goal [of the department] will be to enlarge audiences for foundational and applied sociology, as well as to more broadly educate various publics about the utility of both.” She elaborates further: “This will entail garnering the full range of the department’s sociological scholarship — including all the different theoretical approaches, perspectives, substantive areas, methods, and of course empirical research. That’s one of the things that I really like about this department: the diversity of ways in which the production of sociological knowledge is accomplished. Ultimately, I understand my overall mission is ensuring that such production is understood as necessary and vital to the university, as well as locally and globally.”

So please join us in warmly welcoming Professor Shlay!