Hughes studied at the
University of Chicago under
Robert Ezra Park,
Ernest W. Burgess,
Ellsworth Faris,
Robert Redfield,
Ruth Shonle Cavan,
Nels Anderson, and other noted scholars, of whom he considered Park as his primary mentor (Chapoulie 1996). He defended his thesis, entitled
The Growth of an Institution: The Chicago Real Estate Board in 1928. After his graduation he took a job at
McGill University, where he, together with
Carl Dawson, had the task to develop the sociology department at a time when it still was in its infancy. In Canada Hughes is recognized as one of the central figures of early Canadian sociology (Helmes-Hayes 2000). Hughes is, however, more commonly associated with the Chicago school, as he returned to the
University of Chicago in 1938 and became a core figure at its sociology department (Abbott 1999). He is recognized as either teacher or mentor to numerous well-known scholars associated with the Chicago tradition of qualitative, interactionist sociology, including
Howard S. Becker,
Erving Goffman,
Anselm Strauss and
Eliot Freidson (Chapoulie 1996). In the late 1950s, the research style that Hughes represented withered in Chicago (Abbott 1999) and in 1961, Hughes accepted a position as professor of sociology at
Brandeis University, where he helped to found the school's Graduate Department of Sociology. Under Hughes's influence, the Chicago tradition of fieldwork-oriented interactionism continued in Brandeis, where scholars such as
Irving Kenneth Zola came to be "changed forever" (Conrad et al. 1995). In 1968, he left
Brandeis University for
Boston College (Chapoulie 1996). During the years 1952 to 1961 Hughes served as editor to the
American Journal of Sociology during an era when the journal remained closely linked to the
University of Chicago and its sociology department. During Hughes' era, the journal was traditional in the sense that double-blind review was not applied. When this was implemented in 1961 after Hughes' resignation, he strongly opposed what he perceived as a project of making sociological research appear as disembodied and detached from the social context where it was carried out (Abbott 1999, 146–147). In a letter to
Peter Blau who had taken over editorship from him Hughes expressed his view as follows: A given piece of a man's work has to be judged not merely by itself but as one item in his complete or growing production (...) and a man's ongoing work is by the nature of the case a very personal product and by no means anonymous (quoted in Abbott 1999, 146–147). In 1963, Hughes was elected by his peers to serve as the 53rd President of the
American Sociological Association. His Presidential Address, entitled
Race Relations and the Sociological Imagination, was delivered on August 28, 1963, at the Association's Annual Meeting in
Los Angeles. This address was later published in the December 1963 issue of American Sociological Review (ASR Vol. 28 No. 6 pp 879–890). In 1964, he was elected a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1966, he received an honorary doctorate from
Sir George Williams University, which later became
Concordia University. In 1974, he was awarded the Malinowski Award (see external links).The
American Sociological Association, also cited him in 1982 for his contributions to education. His contributions to the training of sociologists during his time in McGill and in Chicago are well-known (Chapoulie 1996, Helmes-Hayes 1998, 2000, Abbott 1999), but his mentorship and teaching at Brandeis are also acclaimed (Homstrom 1984, Conrad et al. 1995, Weiss 1996). Indeed, he still advised students at Boston College when he was in his late seventies (Manning 2000). ==Published works==