Social Science Space

Vicky Randall, a political scientist whose research into how marginalized populations – such as women, the aged, and those outside the First World – can and do interact in politics, died on November 22. The emeritus professor of government at Essex University was 74.

Remembering criminologist Joan Petersilia who spent her career examining the agencies that conduct U.S. criminal justice, and whose solidly evidence-based work was a major influence in affecting corrections and sentencing reforms.

Rom Harré, a philosopher deeply engaged in critically examining the attributes and vulnerabilities of the social sciences, and who was both an early computational researcher and an incredibly prolific academic author, died October 17 at age 91.

Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist of religion whose work examined the evolving spirituality of the Baby Boomer generation in such words as A Generation of Seekers, has died.

The late South African musician Johnny Clegg was also an anthropologist both formally, as a lecturer on ethnography, and informally as he continued a teaching career from the stage.

Princeton economist Alan Krueger, who The New York Times described as “help[ing] lead economics toward a more scientific approach to research and policymaking” in his repeated stints in the public sector, has died at age 58.

Sociologist Erik Olin Wright, who died last week at age 71, spent his career trying to imagine practical alternatives to capitalism.

Walter Laquer, who fled the Holocaust, experienced the birth of Israel, founded the ‘Journal of Contemporary History,’ and was an unflinching sentinel against terrorism and an authoritarian Russia, died on September 30. He was 97.

Martin Shubik, an economist,  game theorist and political scientist whose sense of persepctive, and of humor, infused his voluminous work on complex and vexing questions, has died at age 92. He died August 22 at his home in Branford, Connecticut; Shubik had been on the faculty at nearby Yale University since 1963.

Ambalavener Sivanandan, a former bank manager and then librarian who became an award-winning novelist and one of Britain’s foremost political thinkers on race, will be honored this Saturday at London’s Red Lion Square.

Political scientist and journalist Angelo Falcón, who brought a focus on Latino and specifically Puerto Rican political issues to the forefront of the academy through organizations like the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy and scholarly projects like the Latino National Political Survey, died on May 24.

Joseph L. White, whose pioneering conceptual work earned him the title of “the godfather of black psychology,” died November 21 while traveling to be with family over the Thanksgiving holiday. The professor emeritus of psychology and psychiatry at the University of California Irvine was 84.