Overview

• The PhD Program in Social Policy is a collaboration between the government and sociology departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the social policy faculty at Harvard Kennedy School leading to a PhD in government and social policy or a PhD in sociology and social policy. The program is designed for students whose research interests engage questions of economic inequality, neighborhoods and spatial segregation, poverty, changing family structures, race and ethnicity, immigration, educational access and quality, political inequalities and participation, and comparative and institutional studies of social policy, particularly in the US and Western Europe.
• In the course of their PhD training, students acquire the analytical tools to connect scholarship in their disciplinary field to problems of social policy, bringing the combined insights of economics, political science, public policy, and sociology to bear on social issues that defy disciplinary compartmentalization. The “discipline-plus” structure of the program means that students complete all the normal requirements for a PhD in government or sociology, plus an intensive program of study in social policy. In this way, they are fully trained in the theory, methods, and substantive concerns of a traditional academic discipline, building a strong foundation for extending inquiry in social policy to other disciplinary domains.