Recently in ISG

ISG Professor Soroya de Chadarevian has partnered up with The Luskin Center for History and Policy and the UCLA Department of History in announcing “Then + Now: Short Takes by UCLA Historians in the Age of Corona”, a series of short and diverse reflections by historians on the current COVID-19 crisis.

Congratulations to Aaron Panofsky, vice chair of academic personnel and  Associate Professor at the Institute for Society and Genetics, Public Policy, and Sociology, at UCLA, who was named a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow on May 22, 2020.

We are pleased to announce the launch of ISG Professor Christopher Kelty’s new book, The Participant, which is a historical ethnography of the concept of participation and further discussion on how it has evolved. Since its release, The Participant has already gained plenty recognition from scholars near and far.

Belated congratulations to Norton Wise, founding co-director of ISG and Distinguished Research Professor of History, Emeritus, at UCLA who was awarded the History of Science Society’s 2019 Sarton Medal for lifetime scholarly achievements on July 25, 2019.

ISG Professor Terence Keel presented his lecture,”Chrisitianity, Race, and Haunting of the Biomedical Sciences,” in the distinguished Goodspeed Lecture series at the Denison University on October 22, 2019 between 7:00PM – 9:00PM.

In addressing the topic of white nationalism, sociologist and ISG Professor, Aaron Panofsky, examined and co-authored a research article on “Genetic ancestry testing among white nationalists: From identity repair to citizen science”, in which he utilized qualitative analysis of posts from an online forum dedicated to white nationalism called Stormfront.

This project seeks to answer the question: “How did perspectives on intellectually disabled people in America change between 1840-1930?”. Central to this project is a timeline tracking the legal, scientific, public health, and education developments towards people with intellectual disabilities.

For ISG Professor Shane Campbell-Staton, his tools are comic books. In his winter quarter course “Biology of Superheroes”, Campbell-Staton challenges his students to develop their perspective on evolutionary biology, as he explores comic book stories of superheroes.

The commercialization of open access research in the US has sparked discussion among Christopher Kelty and Alexandra Lippman. In their recent article “In a race for mentions, it’s open season on researchers,”  Kelty and Lippman discuss the culture of metrics and rank for visibility and status found in notable online open access platforms.

UCLA ISG congratulates Dr. Wayne Grody for being awarded this year as a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).

On Wednesday, November 28, 2018, the Biotechnology and Society Freshman Cluster course hosted Dr. Josiah Zayner as part of its DIY Biology Lecture series (co-hosted by the Institute for Society and Genetics and the UCLA Cluster Program).

Their goal is to uncover more information about how these animals move, eat, and what their genomes look like. Long hopes to detail how elephants without the benefit of tusks as tools may alter their behavior to get access to nutrients.