Social Science

Yale paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson spent several years leading excavations near the shores of Lake Malawi in eastern Africa, uncovering artifacts dating to about 85,00 years ago. An unexpected collaboration with researchers examining environmental data in the region yielded an exciting discovery: the earliest evidence of humans altering their ecosystem with fire.

What can music teach us about the past and about ourselves? Music historian Anna Zayaruznaya challenges students to "attend carefully" to things that sound strange. Zayaruznaya is a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), home to 1200+ faculty and 50 departments and programs that span the divisions of Humanities, Social Science, and Science, and the School of Engineering & Applied Science and provide the instruction to the students of Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Social robots are being used to influence and assist with human-to-human contact.

Can the field of economics help to achieve greater equality? Rohini Pande, economist and Director of the Yale Economic Growth Center, believes economists should consider notions of justice, not just efficiency. As part of a large study, she and her colleagues, along with researchers from the Inclusion Economics initiative, are currently surveying over 5,000 Indian women to better understand a major gender disparity in mobile phone use in the country and whether government policies might be needed to correct the imbalance. Pande is a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), home to 1200+ faculty and 50 departments and programs that span the divisions of Humanities, Social Science, and Science, and the School of Engineering & Applied Science and provide the instruction to the students of Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. MB01BDQ6M2AFLHY

On Monday, April 3, 2023, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spent her day at Yale's Tobin Center for Economic Policy to discuss one of the driving themes of the federal administration's economic agenda: modern supply side economics. This video highlights her meetings with Tobin Center leaders, senior public officials, economics faculty, and students, as well as her end-of-day Fireside Chat with Yale President Peter Salovey. MB01JUHEWP9PWNM

In the United States, every individual owns the right to their own image as a form of intellectual property. The emergence of artificial intelligence technology, however, has complicated the very definition of what one’s image is. In a video, the constitutional law scholar, Robert Post describes this phenomenon as a potential “turning point in law” that may force society to rethink the parameters of this property right. This will affect how contracts are written in the future, in Hollywood and elsewhere, as well as our freedom of expression on the internet.

Yale sociologist Grace Kao studies the sociological and cultural influence of K-pop music. In this video, she discusses how she became interested in the genre and why its global popularity is a boon to Asian Americans. Photo of BTS courtesy of AP Images.

Yale researchers have found that some musical themes are universally recognizable by people across all cultures with diverse musical traditions with one notable exception – love songs. Lullabies, dance songs, and even music designed to heal resonate across all cultures, however people had a hard time identifying songs designed to convey love.

Since 1996, Yale anthropologist Eduardo Fernandez-Duque has studied owl monkeys — the only primate species in the Americas with nocturnal habits. This fall, Fernandez-Duque edited and published, “Owl Monkeys: Biology, Adaptive Radiation, and Behavioral Ecology of the Only Nocturnal Primate in the Americas,” a volume that synthesizes what scholars have discovered about owl monkeys, both in the wild and in captivity, over the past 30 years. The book’s 25 chapters — authored by 57 researchers representing 15 countries — cover a broad range of topics, including the monkeys’ behavior, physical characteristics, diet, genetics, geographic distribution, and conservation status.

While there are many potential benefits of generative artificial intelligence (AI), Yale College student Nicolas Gertler felt the public is too often closed off from scholarly perspectives on the emerging technology. In a new project, Gertler used generative AI’s ability to make bodies of knowledge — in this case, the works of Yale philosopher Luciano Floridi — more accessible. Give it a try here: