In
sociology and later
criminology, the
Chicago School (sometimes described as the
Ecological School) was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specializing in
urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and
ethnographic fieldwork in
Chicago, now applied elsewhere. While involving scholars at several Chicago area universities, the term is often used interchangeably to refer to the
University of Chicago's sociology department—one of the oldest and one of the most prestigious. Following
World War II, a "Second Chicago School" arose whose members used
symbolic interactionism combined with methods of field research, to create a new body of work. This was one of the first institutions to use
quantitative methods in criminology.