At USM’s Department of Sociology & Criminology, we believe that understanding the world is only the first step—what you do with that understanding matters just as much. Our combined department brings together two dynamic programs that train students to analyze systems of power, inequality, and social control while preparing them for meaningful careers in law, policy, social services, research, community organizing, and beyond.
The department stands on a intellectual foundations shaped by three towering scholars: Piers Beirne, a founder of green criminology and pioneering critic of punishment; Wendy Chapkis, a nationally recognized scholar of sexuality, gender, and critical drug studies; and James Messerschmidt, whose work transformed the study of gender and crime. Though retired, their influence continues to animate the department’s commitments to critical inquiry, international perspectives, and engaged, justice-oriented scholarship.
Today’s faculty build on—and push beyond—this legacy. We maintain the department’s reputation for bold, boundary-expanding research while deepening its methodological rigor, global orientation, and applied focus. Our work engages contemporary struggles around policing, surveillance, migration, labor, gender and sexuality, environmental harm, racial domination, and the intersecting crises that shape everyday life. Students benefit from active research agendas, community partnerships, and public programming that bring critical social science into conversation with the most urgent issues of our time.
Our criminology program offers a distinctly global and critical approach to policing, punishment, and state power, helping students make sense of harms that law often ignores and the politics behind what societies choose to criminalize. The program includes an accelerated pathway to Maine Law, and our alumni work throughout Maine and the Northeast in and around the criminal legal system,
Our sociology program grounds students in rigorous qualitative and quantitative research methods, statistical analysis, and the applied skills needed to turn sociological insight into meaningful social action.
Inside and outside the classroom, you’ll connect theory with practice: internships, community-engaged learning, collaborative research, and events that place students at the center of local and statewide debates. Here, you don’t just study the world as it is—you gain the tools, training, and confidence to help shape what it could become.
If you’re ready to study why the world is the way it is—and join the people working to transform it—the Department of Sociology & Criminology is where your next chapter begins.