Mission and Partners
SOMET (Sociology and Methodology of Social Research) is one of the leading sociological PhD Programmes in Italy. Entirely held in English, its courses, seminars and research activites are organised jointly by the University of Milan and the University of Turin. Its Faculty also includes sociologists from other Italian and international universities.
The Ph.D. programme in Sociology has a longstanding tradition of excellence in Italy. It was one of the first to be established after the 1980 university reform and has provided a large number of outstanding academic sociologists who have gone on to make significant contributions to teaching and research in Italy and abroad.
The aim of the programme is to provide structured and advanced training in theoretically-guided empirical research across a wide range of sociological fields and to introduce students to current international issues in both qualitative and quantitative social research.
The course consists of a three-year programme of 60 credits per year. The first year is devoted to basic training, in conjunction with the activities of the Faculty's interdisciplinary Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences. The second year is partly spent in a relevant university department abroad and is devoted to the initial drafting of the thesis. The third year is entirely spent completing the thesis.
Graduates will be able to compete successfully for positions as researchers (in public and private universities and research centers), skilled professionals and consultants in sociology to public agencies and international organizations and institutions in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Several of our recent graduates have obtained positions in important international universities (University of Amsterdam, King's College London, University of Essex, EmLyon Business schoool, Middlesex University).
In 2013, the well-established doctorate in Sociology of the University of Milan made an agreement with the University of Turin and gave rise to the current PhD programme in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research. The Programme was thus enriched with further skills and research fields, and reinforced its position among the leading programs in Italy in terms of doctoral excellence.
Since 2014-2015, the PhD programme in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research (SOMET) has being offering PhD positions for joint degrees with two LERU partner universities – University of Amsterdam and Lund University. From 2019-2020 a new partnership has been activated with Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Several joint-degrees are currently active also with several French Universities, among which the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.
The research areas covered by the PhD Programme in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research (Universities of Milan and Turin) comprise:
Culture and consumption
Digital society and the media
Gender and sexuality
Migration studies, multicultural societies and citizenship
Science, technology, environment and urban studies
Social inequalities and socio-economic stratification
Social movements, collective action and civil society
Sociology of family
Sociology of health
Sociology of politics, public opinion and voting
Work and organizations
For each of these sociological areas/topics, the PhD Programme places particular emphasis on the integration of theories and methods.
A list of possible supervisors for each research area is available here:
