Faculty Archive

A special panel discusses multicultural democracy in a post-election world.

Richard Berk uses big data to foresee the future.

The science behind glass is not as clear as you'd think.

Political Psychology course encourages students to challenge easy explanations.

Arts and Sciences faculty on the fact, fiction, and future of artificial intelligence.

This fall, The Public Classroom @ Penn Museum’s “Science and Race: History, Use and Abuse” brought together more than two dozen internationally recognized experts from diverse backgrounds for a powerful, in-depth exploration of race, science, and justice, in a free series of evening classes geared to audiences ages 14 and above.

As we travel about an environment like a city, we instinctively learn how to get from one location to another and form a “mental map” of our surroundings. How do we do it? And why are some people great navigators while others are frequently disoriented?

Over the past two decades, MES has championed a multidisciplinary approach to environmental work and research and has trained leaders in the field today.

Discover the stories behind the professor of anthropology's favorite office items.

Searches are underway at Penn Arts and Sciences to recruit at least three new tenure-track faculty who combine humanistic studies with environmental themes over the next three years. These faculty positions will allow the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) to build a curriculum in environmental humanities and implement a graduate certificate and minor for undergraduates.

"Moonlight Revelry at Dozo Sagami"

A single short story published in 1841 in a Philadelphia-based magazine by a Boston-born writer invented modern French detective fiction. That is but one insight explored in "Legacies of the Rue Morgue: Science, Space, and Crime Fiction in France" by Andrea Goulet. Edgar Allan Poe’s story, which describes the investigation of a double murder surrounded by strange circumstances, continues to shape the global forms of the crime novel, Goulet says.

In outer space, big data meets infinite information. How can we measure the expansion of the universe? Can we find gravitational waves that trace back to the Big Bang? Are there other planets that can sustain life? Three major U.S. astrophysics projects will address these questions, and Penn scientists have a major role in all three.

The work—and lives—of a little-known group of female philosophers who wrote and disseminated their ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries are being rediscovered by a new generation, including Karen Detlefsen, associate professor of philosophy and education.

Peter Struck, the Evan C Thompson Professor of Excellence in Teaching in classical studies, makes the case for a link between the ancient practice of divination and what seem today to be intuitive leaps in his book "Divination and Human Nature: A Cognitive History of Intuition in Classical Antiquity."

Josephine Park, an associate professor of English, looks at how Asian American writers were incorporating themselves into U.S. society in her new book "Cold War Friendships: Korea, Vietnam, and Asian American Literature."

If you’re looking to relocate and poring over crime statistics, chances are the number of trees in the potential neighborhood isn’t the first variable that to comes to mind. But a new study co-authored by John MacDonald, professor of criminology, suggests that tree cover may actually play a role in violence prevention.

Cullen Blake, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, on the search for other planets in the "Habitable Zone."

Michael Weisberg, professor and chair of the philosophy department, and Deena Weisberg, a senior fellow in the psychology department, are creating a documentary series about the best way to teach evolution.

A panel of political scientists discusses the outcome of the election.