Society

Society: Understanding Human Nature and Behavior

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.

A Public Health Prognosis

March 11, 2021

Graduate student Rachel Woodul spent two years researching what might happen to hospital capacity when the next pandemic strikes. When it arrived, she compared what her model — and others’ — got wrong to improve how we react to public health crises in the future.

In It for the Long Haul

March 9, 2021

For some COVID-19 patients, the initial infection is just the start of the battle. Post-COVID syndrome occurs when a person's symptoms continue long after their infection ends. A new clinic at UNC hopes to not only help these patients, but also provide researchers with valuable data about this strange syndrome.

Rachel Woodul

February 17, 2021

Rachel Woodul is a PhD student in the Department of Geography within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and a research assistant at the Carolina Population Center. She uses geographic information systems to model infectious disease spread, with a specific focus on epidemics and pandemics.