UC Davis to Host Mentoring Institute for Early Career Poverty Researchers

The UC Davis Center for Poverty and Inequality Research recently received a $353,421 federal grant to launch a program to help up-and-coming poverty scholars get their careers off to a strong start. The Early Career Mentoring Institute, which will run for one week each spring of 2022, 2024 and 2026, aims to nurture a diversity of scholars studying poverty and social mobility.

‘Earworm’ Researchers Lead Off Podcast’s New Season

Unfold, a UC Davis podcast, recently launched its third season with College of Letters and Science researchers talking about “Why Is That Song Stuck in My Head?” The episode examines music, memory and what "earworms" — those songs that get stuck in your head — can teach us about how the brain works.

Gorilla Expert Featured in BBC/Discovery+ Documentary

A new documentary, Endangered, produced by Discovery and the BBC Natural History Unit, features UC Davis anthropologist Damien Caillaud’s work to study and protect Grauer’s gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Six Faculty Awarded Hellman Fellowships

Six assistant professors in the College of Letters and Science have been named to UC Davis’ newest class of Hellman Fellows. The Hellman Fellows Fund provides grants to more than 100 junior faculty members annually at all 10 UCs and four private institutions. The fellowships of up to $50,000 are intended to give early-career faculty extra support for their research.

Alumna Earns Prestigious Marshall Scholarship

A recent UC Davis College of Letters and Science graduate has been awarded a prestigious Marshall Scholarship, a decades-old British government program that pays for American students to pursue advanced degrees at British universities. Valencia Scott (B.A., anthropology and international relations, ’20) will pursue a doctorate in criminology at the University of Oxford, where she will focus her studies on the criminalization of Black immigrants. She is planning a career in international human rights law.

Anthropologist Alan Klima Wins 2020 Bateson Prize

A book by UC Davis anthropology professor Alan Klima on Thai spiritual and financial practices is the winner of a 2020 Gregory Bateson Book Prize from the Society for Cultural Anthropology. "Ethnography #9" is one of three recipients of this year’s Bateson Prize, given for works deemed “interdisciplinary, experimental and innovative.” ​

Alumna Anthropologist and Media Scholar Receives MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant

UC Davis alumna Mary L. Gray, an anthropologist and media scholar who investigates how labor, identity and human rights are transformed by the digital economy, has been named a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Gray (B.A., anthropology and Native American studies, ’92) is one of 21 fellows announced Oct. 6 by the MacArthur Foundation.

Archaeologists Use Tooth Enamel Protein to Show Sex of Human Remains

A new method for estimating the biological sex of human remains based on reading protein sequences rather than DNA has been used to study an archaeological site in Northern California. The protein-based technique developed at the University of California, Davis, gave superior results to DNA analysis in studying 55 sets of human remains between 300 and 2,300 years old.