The Major in Sociology encompasses a wide variety of fields, including not only sociology itself, but also cultural anthropology and folklore studies, communication and mass communication studies, and social psychology. Even focusing solely on the field of sociology, the breadth of research includes theory, history, stratification, family, urban studies, culture, and globalization—covering both macro- and micro-level perspectives, as well as qualitative and quantitative approaches. In this way, the Major in Sociology serves as a forum bringing complementary and contrasting methodologies together.
The Major in Psychology focuses primarily on empirical research grounded in the methodologies of experimental psychology. The aim of the major is to train graduate students pursuing psychology as an empirical science to be able to conduct rigorous experiments and perform thorough data analysis. Areas of specialization among the tenured faculty cover a diverse range of fields, from basic-level experimental psychology through to the psychology of learning, perceptual psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, psychophysiology, and neuropsychology.
The Major in Education promotes advanced research across five domains: philosophy of education, history of education, comparative education, educational psychology, and school education. Its committee comprises tenured faculty from the Faculty of Letters’ Major in Education and the Teacher Training Course Center.Rather than limiting research to school education, the major covers broad human development activities from theoretical, historical, empirical, and experimental perspectives. As the three majors operate independently of undergraduate faculties, the Graduate School Committee includes members from the Faculty of Letters’ Department of Sociology, Psychology, Education and Human Sciences, as well as the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Law, the Teacher Training Course Center, and the Institute for Journalism, Media & Communication Studies.
