
Principal Investigator(s): Marcia Meldrum In the past 50 years, through the initiative and efforts of clinicians and staff, social workers, advocates, family members, and people with mental illness themselves, Los Angeles County has endeavored to help those lost in darkness to find their way back to secure and rewarding lives. But what has been done is not yet enough. Our…

Principal Investigator(s): Erik Gjesfjeld, Michael Alfaro, Christopher Kelty This project aims to utilize recent advancements in macroevolutionary research in order to develop new insights into the evolution of technology within both past and present societies. This includes understanding the complex processes that shape how new technologies are created, diversify and eventually go extinct. – “Competition and extinction explain the evolution…

Principal Investigator(s): Martie Haselton, Steve Cole Social isolation is associated with disease and mortality, as well as changes in immune cell gene expression, including upregulation of pro-inflammatory genes and downregulation of antiviral genes. Both transcriptional dynamics are likely to contribute to the health risks associated with social isolation. Despite strong interest in social relationships, transcriptional responses, and health, what remains…

Principal Investigator(s): Christopher Kelty, Aaron Panofsky Participation–as a concept and as a practice–ranges from the frustratingly vague to the strangely precise. It is a currency of legitimacy in the contemporary era as well as a problematization of the relationship between individuals and collectives stretching back hundreds of years. It’s been studied empirically in a surprising number of domains, often without…

Principal Investigator(s): Christopher M. Kelty Scientific newsletters, especially in biology, flourished in the twentieth century. They are virtually unstudied, but can tell us a great deal about the simultaneous development of scientific communities or collectives and the concepts, techniques, collections, materials and maps they produce. This project explores scientific newsletters as a ‘model organism’ on which to study the moral…