Dr. Douglas Harper joined the Department of Sociology in 1995. His principal policy interests concern urban housing and homelessness, and agricultural policy relating to family and factory farms. Harper has held full time and visiting appointments in Sociology Departments at the University of South Florida, the State University of New York, Cornell University, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Bologna, Italy. He has been Chair of Sociology Departments at Duquesne. the University of South Florida and the State University of New York, Potsdam.

Harper has published two books with the University of Chicago Press. These are ethnographies of migrant labor and the nature of work in a small mechanical shop. These books include innovative uses of photography as well as other qualitative methods. His most recent project, a fifteen-year study of change in a dairy farm community, is currently under pre-publication review. Harper has also edited or co-edited three books on visual sociology, the most recent published in Itallian by Franco Angeli, Milan. He is the founding Editor of Visual Sociology, the official journal of the International Visual Sociology Association. He is also Co-Director of a 20 minute 16 mm ethnographic film on a rural sawmill, which has been shown at several festivals and conferences. His papers have appeared in French, Italian and German, and his first book has been translated and published by University Presses in France and Italy. He has published more than 30 chapters, articles and photo essays, and has been invited by more than 50 universities in the U.S. and abroad to lecture on qualitative methods.

Back to top

Dr. Michael Irwin joined Duquesne University's Sociology Department in 1995. His research interests center on population growth and distribution, economic structure, and community change.

Dr. Irwin's research interests are spatial processes, urban/community sociology, demography, human ecology, and economic sociology. Recent publications include "There's No Place Home: Non-Migration and Civic Engagement" (with Charles Tolbert and Thomas Lyson) in Environment and Planning (forthcoming); "Local Capitalism, Civic Engagement And Socioeconomic Well-Being" (with Charles Tolbert and Thomas Lyson) in Social Forces ;"How to Build Strong Home Towns" (with Charles Tolbert and Thomas Lyson) in American Demographics; "Social Capital of Local Communities" (with Irina Sharkova) in Metroscape; and "The Permeability of the Japanese Political-Economy: Amakudari" (with Richard Colignon and Chikako Usui), in Association of Japanese Business Studies Best Papers Proceedings, 1997. Recent Grant Research includes: "Civic Community and Civic Welfare: A Study Based on Economic Census Microdata" National Science Foundation; "Civil Society and Rural Development" USDA, National Research Initiative Program; "Population Projections for an Analysis of the Socio-Economic Effects of Outer Continental Shelf Activity on Ports" US Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service; The Structure of Social and Economic Isolation in Underclass Populations National Science Foundation, Human Capital Initiative.

Back to top

Professor MacMillen writes within the tension between critical and phenomenological approaches to religion. She is author of two books, Real Stories of Christian Initiation (Liturgical Press, 2006) and Encountering the Other: Religious Dialogue and Hospitality (Forthcoming, Cambridge Scholars Press). Her dissertation was an examination of bereavement support groups and class and religious differences in grieving individuals. Her theoretical influences include Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Simone Weil. Her current research interests include investigation of a peace group in Israel-Palestine and a monograph on the Jewish philosopher Gillian Rose’s conversion to Anglicanism. 

Dr. MacMillen feels that the religious call to ethics and the sociological vocation to praxis are one in the same. As an organic intellectual (in Gramsci’s terms), she is committed to bringing working-class narratives and experiences into her assessment of critical theory and Marxist approaches. With this vocation she teaches courses including Classical Sociological Theory, Introduction to Peace and Justice, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Sex and Gender, and will debut a new course on the Sociology of Catholicism in Spring 2009. She is a member of the Radical Orthodoxy movement within Anglicanism.  She is also a member of the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association, the Society for Phenomenology and Human Sciences, and the American Academy of Religion. Professor MacMillen is also an accomplished athlete and musician. In “another life” she was an all-star soccer athlete competing internationally, and moonlighted as a jazz and classical clarinetist and vocalist in Boston and New York. 

Back to top

Linda Morrison joined the faculty at Duquesne University in Fall 2007. Prior to coming to Duquesne, Dr. Morrison taught sociology at Oakland University in Michigan from 2001-2007. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology (2003), M.A. in Anthropology (1995), and M.S.W. (1985) from the University of Pittsburgh, and has worked in Pittsburgh's community mental health system as a mental health professional and as an advocate.       

Dr. Morrison is the author of Talking Back to Psychiatry: The Consumer/Survivor/Ex-Patient Movement (Routledge 2005). Her articles have been published in Humanity & Society and Radical Psychology.   Dr. Morrison's work focuses on the intersection of human objects of policy with professionals who construct and provide human/social services. She studies recipient activism and advocacy, with particular attention to activist influence on policymaking, knowledge-making and evaluation processes. Her interests extend across the health, mental health, disability and welfare arenas.

Dr. Morrison will be teaching Sociological Methods, Introduction to Human Services, Helping Process and Fieldwork.

Back to top

Dr. Ann Marie Popp, Assistant Professor of Sociology, joined the faculty of Duquesne University in the Fall of 2007. Before joining the faculty at Duquesne University, Dr. Popp was a member of the faculty at the University of South Carolina Aiken and at Siena College. Prior to accepting a position in academia, she was the research coordinator on a study identifying barriers to client participation in a food assistance program for the New York State Department of Health. Her research interests include the causes of bullying and criminal victimization in schools, the relationship between the development of the urban underclass and the distribution of urban crime rates, and the organizational effectiveness of human service agencies.

Back to top

Dr. Matthew Schneirov, Associate Professor of Sociology, has been a member of the Policy Center's faculty since 1992. Prior to coming to Duquesne, Professor Schneirov taught at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and at Hamilton College in New York.

Dr. Schneirov's book The Dream of a New Social Order: American Popular Magazines, 1893-1914, published by Columbia University Press, appeared in July, 1994. He has also completed a study of Pittsburgh area alternative health groups which has resulted in publications in The Sociological Quarterly. Matthew Schneirov's most recent book is, A Diagnosis for Our Times: Alternative Health —From Lifeworld to Politics (SUNY Press, forthcoming, 2003). Professor Schneirov has served on the Policy Center's internship, curriculum and admissions committees.

Back to top

Dr. Joseph D. Yenerall, Associate Professor of Sociology, has been a member of the sociology department's faculty since its 1979. His research interests include gerontology, education and community studies. Prior to coming to Duquesne, Dr. Yenerall served as a project director for the National Council on the Aging, Inc., as a research professor with the Institute for Public Policy Alternatives, State University of New York, Albany, and for eight years as chair of the Sociology Department at State University College, Potsdam, New York. Dr. Yenerall was named a Fulbright Scholar in Social Gerontology, 1999-2000, for teaching and research at University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.

Professor Yenerall is currently involved with research on the educational needs and motivations of older adults and on the social institutions of the rural elderly in the United States. Dr. Yenerall has published in Sociological Focus, the Journal of Clinical Gerontology, Sociological Viewpoints, and the Journal of Geriatrics and Gerontological Education. He is the author of three books, The Rural Aged in America (SUNY Press, 1976) and A Study Guide For Introductory Sociology (Little, Brown and Co., 1983) and, most recently, The Rural Elderly (Mellon Publishers, 1999).

He serves on the editorial advisory boards of McGraw-Hill and The Dushkin Publishing Group. Dr. Yenerall is immediate Past President of the Pennsylvania Sociological Society (1999-2000) and editor of NCSA Notes, the newsletter of the North Central Sociological Association. He is currently serving on the executive councils of the North Central Sociological Association and the Pennsylvania Sociological Society. Professor Yenerall is also a member of the American Sociological Association. He has been a faculty member of the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy at Duquesne since its inception in the late 1980's.

Back to top