Introduction. The article analyzes doctoral dissertations in sociology defended in the territory of the Russian Federation over the last decade, examines the trends in selecting research object and subject in the context of the Higher Attestation Commission specialties, provides an analysis of dissertations, including quantitative and qualitative characteristics of works and identification of the main research problems.

Materials and methods. Based on the full texts of dissertation research works and abstracts of doctoral dissertations, the authors classify them according to the Higher Attestation Commission codes, by research objects and topics, geography of organizations where the dissertations were defended, the number of publications of the defenders and years of defense.

Results. Having analyzed the data obtained in the course of the research, the authors identify an uneven number of doctoral dissertations during the study period, a sharp decline in the numbers of publications in the Web of Science and Scopus listed journals from 2020 to 2022, which is due to the worldwide practice of isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic and the introduced economic and political sanctions against the Russian Federation. Considering the research subjects and objects, the study revealed that the largest number of works are related to the economic potential of the Russian regions, youth and family policy in Russia, the analysis of theoretical constructs of sociology and the search for new methods of sociological research. Certain works are devoted to socially negative phenomena in the social structure: housing deprivation, marginality, penitentiary prevention, migration problems and risks of transformation processes in the Russian society, which are of noir coloring.

Discussion. In the course of the research the authors draw attention to sociologists’ interest in a number of topical problems of the time and predict the emergence of scientific research related to socially inclusive adaptive processes of the health care system and educational institutions transformation, to studying public opinion on the issues of conducting a special military operation, social adaptation issues of participants of the special military operation. In addition, such important public policy aspects as demographic indicators, healthcare reforms and the search for new educational and socio-cultural trajectories for children and youth will remain relevant for researchers.

Keywords: sociology, dissertation activity, content analysis, dissertation, sociological research