Our History

The department was established in February of 1920 and was headed by Reverend Mark Cain, SJ. Originally, the department had three full time faculty specializing in both social and political sciences.  By 1938, there were 6 full-time faculty and 130 students (56 sociology majors) had graduated from Marquette with social science degrees. Between 1966 and 1984, our department sustained significant growth when three new majors (anthropology, social work, and criminology and law studies) joined the department.  The department was officially renamed the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences in 1985.  In 2002, the social work program was closed and transformed into the Social Welfare and Justice major.  In 2019, the department added a Master's Degree in Criminal Justice Data Analytics. Today, the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences is home to over 450 students majoring and/or minoring in Anthropology, Criminology and Law Studies, Social Welfare and Justice, and/or Sociology, making it one of the largest departments in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Our Faculty

Currently, the department houses fifteen full-time and over twenty-five part-time faculty who conduct research and teach classes in the department's four majors. The department has a long tradition of qualitative and quantitative multidisciplinary research on issues of race, gender, family, punishment, and law. Faculty members have been awarded grants from the Mellon Foundation, U.S. State Department, National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Institute of Justice, Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Wisconsin Department of Corrections. They have also received various Marquette University internal grants to conduct important social science research.  Our faculty have been recognized by several prestigious University awards including Research Excellence, Teaching Excellence, Way Klingler Young Scholar, Way Klingler Fellowship, and Excellence in Faculty Advising Awards.  Books by our faculty have been published by top university presses such as Oxford and Columbia University, NYU, University of Chicago, and by academic presses including Sage, Russell Sage Foundation Press, Rowman Littlefield, Waveland Press, and Taylor and Francis Group.

Additional Information

Please contact us if you have any questions.