A demographer who specializes in China, Melanie Brasher has long heard the question, “Will China grow old before it grows rich?” With the recent release of China’s 10-year census, that question is resurfacing.

Julia Santini ’21 expects to call upon lessons learned in each of her three majors—biology, sociology, and Italian—as a medical doctor.

Dr. Hilda Lloréns has been awarded a Humanities Center subvention grant for her forthcoming book on Afro-descendant women of Puerto Rico’s coastal communities.

While still an undergraduate, Leah Hopkins ’20 became the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology’s first community engagement specialist. Her job: Collaborate with academic institutions, create educational programming, and raise the profile of Indigenous and tribal communities.

Sociology professors Melanie Brasher, Alana Bibeau, and Christine Zozula hosted a discussion panel on October 29, 2020 that featured two of the Rhode Island Survivor players and addressed complex issues of race and racism that played a prominent role during the 39th season of the game (2019).
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Sociology professors Julie Keller and Judy Van Wyk have contributed to an online public lecture series available on URI’s Social Science Institute for Research, Education and Policy (SSIREP) website.

URI Anthropology professor, Hilda Lloréns, was awarded the 2020 Silvestrini Prize for her co-authored article entitled “Water is life, but the colony is a necropolis: Environmental terrains of struggle in Puerto Rico.”

Archaeology and history buffs alike will get to learn more about URI’s long and complicated history through a “Walking Through Time: The 3000-Year History of the URI Campus.”

In her debut book, Courting the Community: Legitimacy and Punishment in a Community Court, URI sociology professor Christine Zozula provides the first behind-the-scenes look into community courts by a person outside of community court advocacy.

Kate Fish, a junior majoring in anthropology and biology, is spending her summer research fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City examining the skeletons of domestic and wild canids, comparing the bones that play a part in tail posture and tail wagging.