Society

Society: Understanding Human Nature and Behavior

Cynthia Fraga Rizo

July 7, 2021

Cynthia Fraga Rizo is an associate professor within the UNC School of Social Work. She researches intimate partner violence, sexual abuse, and human trafficking to prevent such acts and provide survivors with effective services and interventions.

Christina Rudosky

June 10, 2021

Christina Rudosky is a teaching assistant professor of French in the Department of Romance Studies within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. She studies surrealism and why objects were coveted, collected, and brought to life through writing and art during this 20th-century avant-garde movement.

Keeping Rip Currents in Check

June 8, 2021

As a UNC graduate student, Greg Dusek’s dissertation was the development of a rip current prediction model for the North Carolina coastline. That was back in 2006. Since then, Dusek and his colleagues have continued to develop that project into what is now part of the most comprehensive and widespread rip current model in the U.S.

Julian Rucker

May 26, 2021

Julian Rucker is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and a fellow in the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity. He studies beliefs about structural racism, perceptions of societal racial inequality, and motivations to rectify racial disparities.

Searching for Better Ways to Search

May 19, 2021

In 2000, researchers in the School of Information and Library Science’s Interaction Design Lab were at the forefront of information retrieval on the World Wide Web. While technology and research methods have changed in the past 20 years, the basic premise of their research has not: how people navigate the internet in search of information.

Zardas Lee

April 28, 2021

Zardas Lee is a PhD student in the Department of History within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. They explore how people from small colonies in South and Southeast Asia pursued dreams of freedom and independence in the 1940s and ’50s while empires and superpowers dominated the world order.

The P’urhépecha Podcasts

April 15, 2021

Through community radio and podcasts, Maria Gutierrez strives to preserve her ancestral language and identity — that of an indigenous people from Michoacán, Mexico, called the P’urhépecha.

Spiritual Evolution

April 8, 2021

Through study of a “new” Japanese religion called Tenrikyo and centuries of Japanese history, PhD student Timothy Smith strives to understand how cultural shifts morph belief systems across generations.

Learning As We Go

March 23, 2021

Teachers are stressed. Students are struggling. Parents are shouldering more responsibilities than ever before. While the controversy surrounding when and how schools should reopen has led to policy debates and changes in family dynamics, UNC epidemiologists and education researchers find hope in the lessons from this year.

Taking the Economy’s Temperature

March 16, 2021

Millions of people are unemployed, many industries are struggling, and some businesses will never open again. Will we recover? UNC economists and financial analysts remain cautiously optimistic.