Social Sciences

ANTHROPOLOGY - Teeth from an extinct monkey species are a clue to the ages of fossils of human ancestors throughout South Africa. A study from UO anthropologist Stephen Frost and a team of colleagues updates the proposed ages of key fossil sites in South Africa, sites that hold important clues to human evolution.

GEOGRAPHY, INFOGRAPHICS - Cartographers at the University of Oregon’s InfoGraphics Lab were a key partner on a new report on migrations of deer and elk that highlights the challenges the animals face and offers solutions and tools for conservation.

ANTHROPOLOGY - Ever since the first human-controlled spacecraft escaped Earth’s gravity, people have been pushing toward permanent human life inhabiting planets beyond Earth. Some might say it's brand-new territory, but UO professor and Museum of Natural and Cultural History associate director Scott Fitzpatrick argues that humans have already faced similar great unknowns.

GEOGRAPHY, INFOGRAPHICS - A new report out of a collaboration with the UO InfoGraphics Lab, the Wyoming Migration Initiative researchers and the Pew Charitable Trusts synthesizes the growing body of science regarding the migration of western North America’s populations of mule deer, elk, pronghorn, etc and identifies the most substantive threats to migrating wildlife.

Seven faculty members have been recognized for their exceptional teaching with the 2022 Distinguished Teaching Awards. Recipients of the University of Oregon annual awards are tia north, Katie Lynch, Keli Yerian, Michael Aronson, Lara Bovilsky, David Steinberg and Tina Starr.

GENERAL SOCIAL SCIENCES - What brings people together? Alumni Connor Bussey, BS ’19 (business administration), and Adam Faris, BS ’20 (general social science), took to the popular TikTok platform for answers to that question during the pandemic. What they found: Cars. Yachts. Mansions. Sports. No, really.

University of Oregon alumnae are changing the face of public service. We look to the women highlighted in this article to govern nations, lead at the highest level of the military, interpret the law, determine the constitutionality of the law, and apply it to individual cases, and serve the public in state and local government.

ANTHROPOLOGY - Every summer, students and faculty members from the University of Oregon travel to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History’s Archaeology Field Schools. Working and learning in remote desert regions of central Oregon, they spend six weeks uncovering evidence of the earliest known people in North America.

BIOLOGY, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES - When the Holiday Farm Fire tore through the McKenzie River Valley in 2020, burning 70,000 acres, it created a blank canvas of sorts. Amid the fire’s blackened landscape, UO ecologist Lauren Ponisio saw an opportunity to establish pollinators, specifically bees, in the burned forest.

ANTHROPOLOGY - A look into how environmental variables accelerate, slow or even reverse the aging process is the focus of a University of Oregon anthropologist whose research was recently funded by the National Institutes of Health.