The Storm that Changed Her
A hurricane in 2010 turned Caela O’Connell’s dissertation plans upside down. It continues to affect her and her research 11 years later as a UNC-Chapel Hill anthropology professor.
Society
Society: Understanding Human Nature and Behavior
Setting the Art World Ablaze
Upon discovering a series of political cartoons mocking artists in 18th- and 19th-century France in 2010, UNC-Chapel Hill art historian Kathryn Desplanque couldn’t stop searching for them. Now, she has amassed more than 500 and is using them to redefine how we think about art and the artist in modern-day society.
Lamar Graham
Lamar Graham is an assistant professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Studies within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. He studies historical grammar and sound changes within the Spanish language and compares them to those found in other Romance languages.
The Sanctity of Cherokee
As a result of systemic oppression, there are fewer than 200 native Cherokee speakers in North Carolina. To keep the language alive and pass it to the next generation, UNC-Chapel Hill researcher and Eastern Band Cherokeean citizen Benjamin Frey has teamed up with computer scientists Mohit Bansal and Shiyue Zhang to create a new translation model and grow the literary library of works available in Cherokee.
Putting Skill to Work
Nichola Lowe spotted the gaps in the U.S. workforce long before the pandemic shined a light on them. She’s spent the last 15 years studying how employees develop and use skills at work, and how employers encourage development of those skills. Most recently, she’s written a book on the topic and is using lessons from the pandemic to drive her current research.
Rainier Masa
Rainier Masa is an assistant professor in the UNC School of Social Work. He studies the intersection of socioeconomic precarity, stigma, and HIV in adolescents and young adults.
The Time Tracker
The pace of life varies often. Sometimes it drags, others it races. But if time always moves at the same rate, why does it feel different? That’s a question UNC-Chapel Hill philosopher Carla Merino-Rajme strives to answer.
Taking On Discrimination
Julian Rucker wants to motivate people to address the stark racial disparities that have characterized the history of the United States. As a UNC-Chapel Hill postdoctoral researcher, he uses social psychology to unpack why structural racism exists, how people perceive it, and why we must change policies to eliminate it from our society.
A Respectable Use of Time
How do official records of the American past differ from those documented by the everyday women who lived through it? Danielle Burke, a master’s student in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of American Studies, is combining studio art with archival and ethnographic research to explore class, gender, and identity through an overlooked sector of craftspeople: handweavers and lacemakers.
A High-Tech Solution to Hunger
With a passion for technology, a drive to make a real-world impact in their community, and some help from UNC-Chapel Hill researchers, three local high school students created Pantry Patrol, a user-friendly application designed to help food pantries better combat hunger.