Social Sciences News

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY - A new UO study is examining the effects of opioids on an understudied population: developing infants. Human physiology associate professor Adrianne Huxtable is focusing her newest research project on the effects of opioids during pregnancy on essential breathing circuits.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES - During the tumultuous summer and fall of 2020, a photojournalist needed more than cameras and lenses to cover the news. Kevlar jackets, ballistic helmets, and gas masks were also standard operating equipment.

ENGLISH - Anne Helen Petersen knows a little bit about Millennials. She is one. And when her BuzzFeed article, “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,” went viral in 2019—surpassing seven million readers and becoming the online news platform’s most-read article of the year—she knew she’d hit a nerve.

A University of Oregon program that provides education to incarcerated Oregonians is expanding with a boost from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, one of the largest supporters of the arts and humanities in the United States.

PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY & BIOCHEMISTRY - Nicole Wales will probably not be the only University of Oregon senior graduating this June with dreams of becoming a science professor. And there will also be others who represent the first in their family to attend college. What really sets Wales apart, though, are the challenges she overcame just to get to the university, let alone thrive as a scholar and researcher.

ENGLISH - Kara Clevinger is playing to strengths of the online realm, bringing students together for courses—she teaches composition and 19th-century American novels—and also the human connections people need to be healthy, especially in a time of isolation.

INFOGRAPHICS - In 2021, the University of Oregon has received a $4.52 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a new initiative envisioning a transformative research platform for racial and climate justice. It is the largest humanities award in UO history. As part of the funding, the Just Futures Institute includes cross campus collaboration.

INDIGENOUS, RACE & ETHNIC STUDIES - Academic residential communities are helping give students a place to live and learn with other students with similar interests, identities and majors.

INFOGRAPHICS - A group out of the UO’s InfoGraphics Lab collaborated with Wyoming researchers, including biologist Matt Kauffman and filmmaker Gregory Nickerson, to produce a video that uses 3D visualization to show the doe’s accomplishment and track her most recent migration in the spring of 2019.

GEOGRAPHY, INFOGRAPHICS - Students are being trained in spatial data science are landing exciting jobs and serving humanitarian ends. The spatial data major draws from geography, computer science, and math to consider how location-based data and technologies can be leveraged across public policy, consumer technology, and disaster relief—to name a few of the discipline’s countless applications.

GEOGRAPHY, INFOGRAPHICS - Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates, published in 2018 by Oregon State University Press, documents deer journeys with words, photographs, and detailed maps.The project was led by tMatthew Kauffman, BS ’92 (biology), and Jim Meacham, BS ’84, MA ’92 (geography).

INFOGRAPHICS - A six-year collaboration between cartographers from the University of Oregon and wildlife biologists from the University of Wyoming has resulted in the publication this fall of “Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates.”

INFOGRAPHICS - Of the $21.1 million the NEH grant allocated in 2016, only two projects in Oregon earned an award. Of those two projects only UO’s Time Online received the maximum funding allowed. The project is an interactive history of infographic design, and it’s all about collaboration, according to its director and UO Robert D. Clark Honors College history professor Daniel Rosenberg.

INFOGRAPHICS - A map created by the UO Graphics Lab has featured in The New York Times. Science writer James Gorman visited Wyoming to report on a collaborative effort of universities and agencies to document the migration routes and health of the state's mule deer. The story is in the Feb. 3, 2015, Science Times section.

INFOGRAPHICS - For two decades professor Esther Jacobson-Tepfer braved the challenging conditions in Mongolia’s rugged backcountry to catalog the country's monuments. For her work she was honored with the highest award by the Mongolian government. Her work was supported through a collaboration with UO geographer James Meacham and the UO’s InfoGraphics Lab.