The Layers Beneath the Church
October 31, 2022
Michelle Freeman uncovers how clergy and laity revered saints in the fourth to sixth centuries to improve cultural understanding today.
PhD Student
RUNC: Julianne Davis
September 7, 2022
Julianne Davis studies how water, sediment, and the landscape influence one another.
Bringing Bivalves Back
August 18, 2022
Oysters have been dying off for the last century, and PhD candidate Mark Ciesielski wants to know why — and how to stop it.
RUNC: Samuel Akau
June 23, 2022
PhD student Samuel Akau engenders creative, participatory public policies.
Farnosh Mazandarani
May 11, 2022
Farnosh Mazandarani is a PhD student in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She studies popular pornographic media content in the U.S. and how trends in popularity coincide with societal and cultural events, advances, and movements.
Eduardo Tadafumi Sato
January 26, 2022
Eduardo Tadafumi Sato is a PhD candidate in the Department of Music within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. He studies how music is defined across national borders and unpacks the social and political definitions of what makes music “national,” specifically within Brazil.
A Project of Her Own
October 20, 2021
Most UNC-Chapel Hill PhD students oversee their own research projects for their dissertations. But Kriddie Whitmore did it in a foreign country — and with the added challenges of a language barrier, bad weather, and limited equipment. This past summer, Whitmore traveled to the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, tackling their demands with incredible tenacity and creativity.
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.
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.
Irene Manning
March 17, 2021
Irene Manning is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. She develops functional materials that capture PFAS — chemicals created in the production of goods like Teflon, stain-resistant fabrics, and food packaging — and remove them from water.