Said and Done

Research Portfolio 
Research is the engine for the School's capacity to help meet the world's great challenges. To name just a few areas of impact, MIT SHASS research helps alleviate poverty, safeguard elections, steer economies, understand the past and present, inform health policy, assess the impact of new technologies, understand human language, and create new forms at the juncture of art and science.
Research Portfolio


LINGUISTICS
New paper amplifies hypothesis on deep origins of human language | Shigeru Miyagawa
Miyagawa, Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture at MIT, and his co-authors think that some apparently infinite qualities of modern human language, when re-analyzed, display the finite qualities of languages of other animals—meaning that human communication is more similar to that of other animals than we have realized. 
Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News | Paper at Frontiers in Psychology 
 

SCIENCE WRITING 
The New Yorker  | One of a Kind | Seth Mnookin 
What do you do if your child has an ultra-rare condition that is new to science?" In this New Yorker essay, Mnookin, co-director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing, explores how open science, next-generation sequencing, social media, and families are affecting the way rare diseases are discovered, studied, and treated. 
Article in The New Yorker | Audio interview on WBUR

 

L and R: Details, "Protein NGLY1 PDB 2ccq," illustration by Emw; Creative Commons; Center; Seth Mnookin, Associate Professor of Science Writing, Co-director, Graduate Program in Science Writing
 

 
POLITICAL SCIENCE
3 Questions | Kenneth Oye on the regulation of genetic engineering
Political scientist discusses regulatory gaps in assessing the impact of “gene drives.”
Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News

 
HISTORY
The Historian's Lab | Christopher Capozzola
"For historians our laboratories are libraries and archives. It’s where we play around with the raw materials, where we make discoveries. We experiment. We put one set of theoretical ideas about how society is structured, how culture works, next to the raw data—that might be a set of letters, or oral histories—in the same way that a chemist puts a theory against a particular set of chemicals in a reaction."
Story by Laurie Everett for Spectrum Continuum


POLITICAL SCIENCE 
3 Questions | Johannes Haushofer on the psychology of poverty
Does a mental “feedback loop” prevent the poorest from exploring ways to change their lives?
Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News
 

LITERATURE 
Melville scholar Wyn Kelley sails aboard the Charles W. Morgan
Kelley has spent more than 30 years researching the works of Herman Melville, particularly his whaling novel Moby-Dick; she was among those selected to sail this summer on the last surviving 19th-century whaling ship from Melville's era. 
Story by Kathryn O'Neill, SHASS Communications          


ECONOMICS 
Q&A | David Autor on U.S. inequality issues among the “99 percent”
In an article in Science, MIT economist Autor moves the U.S. inequality discussion beyond the 1% vs. 99% comparison. And, in the long run, he says, "the best policies we have to combat inequality involve investing in our citizenry. Higher education, and public education, is America’s best idea. Those investments also include preschool, good primary and secondary schools, and adequate nutrition and health care."
Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News

L to R: Chris Capozzola, Associate Professor of History; Wyn Kelley, Melville scholar, MIT Literature;
David Autor, Professor of Economics

POLITICAL SCIENCE
The Politics of Public Opinion | Christopher Warshaw 
Do our opinions matter? Political scientist Christopher Warshaw is working to find out, as he uncovers the impact of public opinion on the policy process and strategies to create environmental change.
Story at MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change  
Related Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News: Warshaw's research on voters influence with city governments


POLITICAL SCIENCE
The varieties of nuclear strategy | Vipin Narang
In a new book, Narang, an assistant professor of political science at MIT, examines the multiple political uses of nuclear weapons, and how realities have changed since the Cold War. Today, most countries with nuclear weapons have smaller arsenals, and are regional powers, not global forces. For these reasons, Narang argues that the U.S. approach to nuclear doctrine needs an overhaul. 
Story by Peter Dizikes at MIT News
 

ANTHROPOLOGY
SHASS faculty and alumni present Public Lab at the White House Maker Faire 
In the Public Lab project, artists and social scientists meet with technologists, community activists and others to create "citizen science." 
Report at Public Lab | Kitemappers — Video about the Public Lab