Four focus areas for UC Davis’ first “Grand Challenges” are bringing together experts from across the campus to address climate change, emerging health threats and sustainable food systems — and to reimagine the university itself.
Two students and three alumni of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants to study and teach in other countries.
Two faculty members in the College of Letters and Science have been awarded fellowships from the UC Davis Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement to develop new undergraduate courses focused on human rights.
Connections that UC Davis scholars built across campus and continents have led to a $298,000 National Science Foundation award to engage with Inuit fermenters in Greenland and support them in identifying the challenges and opportunities for creating a resurgence in Inuit fermented foods. Their research is part of “Navigating the New Arctic,” one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas.
For his graduate research comparing languages around the world, Lewis Lawyer couldn’t find a single published reference book on Patwin, an endangered language once spoken in hundreds of Northern California communities, including what is now Davis. So, on his way to completing his UC Davis doctorate, Lawyer wrote one. With the release of "A Grammar of Patwin," the findings of his dissertation are now available to scholars as well as to Patwin/Wintun people working to revitalize their ancestral language.
Four doctoral candidates in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science have been awarded yearlong fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies to research and write their dissertations.
To celebrate and connect Indigenous activist-researchers across the hemisphere, UC Davis Department of Native American Studies graduate students are holding their ninth annual research symposium April 26-29. The theme this year is “From Red Power to Wallmapu Libre and Land Back” and the event will feature a lineup of Indigenous scholars and activists, as well as 25 graduate student researchers from UC Davis and beyond who represent a multitude of disciplines and collaborate with numerous Indigenous communities.
The UC Office of the President recently awarded around $19 million total for Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) in agriculture, the coronavirus, humanities and culture, state policy on social and economic issues, and the Electron-Ion Collider.
Through a rich and interwoven mix of the humanities — literature, human rights, ethnic studies, art — UC Davis faculty and students are deepening the world’s understanding of climate change and its lasting grip on the human experience.
Recent graduate Jumana Esau (B.A., English, ’20) combined her passions for literary scholarship and human rights to explore climate change and its impact on overlooked and vulnerable populations. Her honors thesis examines African futuristic works in climate fiction.
Devastating wildfires raging across California this year have been perceived mostly as a destructive force. But prior to European arrival in California, Native Americans used fire as a restorative land management technique that cleared underbrush and encouraged new plant growth.
The practice of “cultural burning” is being explored at UC Davis by students and faculty in collaboration with tribes through the Native American studies course “Keepers of the Flame.”
