In the late 1950s, UNESCO conducted a feasibility study to introduce sociology as an academic discipline in Bangladesh. As a part of that program, renowned French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss visited the Chittagong Hill Tracts and found an urgency to study indigenous communities from sociological and anthropological perspectives. Lévi-Strauss then strongly recommended establishing the full-fledged Sociology Department at the University of Dhaka. Accordingly, a UNESCO advisor and famous social anthropologist Pierre Bessaignet founded the Sociology Department in 1957 with the support...

Dr. Fatema Rezina Iqbal Chairman, Department of Sociology

The Department of Sociology at the University of Dhaka has been instrumental in establishing empirical sociology in Bangladesh. The Department was the first to be established in Bangladesh in 1957 which was critical in legitimating sociology at a time when it was not held in high regard in this country. ...