Career

Eugene Halton
joined the University of Notre Dame in 1982 as an assistant professor, was promoted to full professor in 1993, and became professor emeritus in 2020. He was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Yale University in 1989-1990, and was selected as a member of the Fulbright Senior Specialist Roster from 2010 to 2015. In 1985-1986 he was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Scholar at the University of Tuebingen, Germany.

Halton held a postdoctoral fellowship between 1979-1981 in Clinical Psychology Research at the University of Chicago and Michael Reese Hospital. In 1978-1979 he was a Lecturer in the Collegiate Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, teaching in the social science core course.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Princeton University in 1972 and his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in Human Development in 1979. His dissertation thesis was Cultural Signs and Urban Adaptation: The Meaning of Cherished Household Possessions, which was the basis for his coauthored book, The Meaning of Things. Between 1975 and 1978 he served as Project Director for a research study of "Cultural Symbols and Urban Adaptation" funded by National Institute of Aging, at the University of Chicago.