John R. Logan is Professor of Sociology and Director of the S4 initiative. He came to Brown University in Fall 2004, after 24 years at the University at Albany, where he served as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Director of the Lewis Mumford Center, and Director of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis. Dr. Logan is co-author, along with Harvey Molotch, of Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. His most recent edited book, The New Chinese City: Globalization and Market Reform, was published by Blackwell in 2001.

Research Interests:

Urban Sociology, Race & Ethnicity, Migration & Immigration, Family, Political Sociology

Current projects:

Dr. Logan is pursuing several different research projects. For several years he has been gathering data on neighborhood change and individual mobility in U.S. cities in the period 1880-1920. The webpage linked below for Albany People and Neighborhoods shows the extraordinary amount of information that is available about neighborhoods, including historical maps, demographic characteristics of small areas, and lists of people who lived there. Another webpage, New York City History, reports on a project that has traced individual residents over time to see how their families, work, and neighborhoods changed between 1900 and 1920. A much larger project underway will provide this kind of information for several thousand residents of both New York and Chicago.

Since the early 1990s Dr. Logan has also studied social change in China, focusing on how individuals, families, and communities have been affected by the transition from socialism to a mixed political economic system. In 1999, with eventual support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, he organized the Urban China Research Network to stimulate more collaborative research across disciplines and strengthen ties among scholars in this area. A new project now under review would involve as many as 20 scholars in a study of urban change in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan.