Society And Culture

Associate Professor of Anthropology T.S. Harvey has been awarded a Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship—a first for a Vanderbilt faculty member—for his environmental justice and public health work in Guatemala. Harvey is one of only two 2022 recipients of the senior fellowship, which is intended to support research that advances and contributes knowledge to sciences, engineering and medicine. Read More

Governments of lower- and middle-income countries increasingly are turning to public-private partnerships to operate schools as an alternative to traditional public schools. Vanderbilt professors Felipe Barrera-Osorio and Andrew Dustan have received a one-year NSF grant in excess of $400,000 to lead an interdisciplinary study on the quality of these partnership schools in Bogotá, Colombia. Read More

Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and the Nashville Symphony have announced an expansion of their partnership in the Curb Youth Symphony. Beginning with the 2022–23 school year, Nashville Symphony Associate Conductor Nathan Aspinall will serve as conductor and artistic director of the ensemble.  Read More

Join Kendra Oliver, assistant professor of pharmacology and director and founder of ArtLab, for the next Lab-to-Table Conversation on Wednesday, July 27. The panelists will explore how a group of self-identified scientist-artists are embracing this particular duality.  Read More

Americans’ general faith and trust in democracy has stabilized in the first half of 2022, remaining relatively flat through the second quarter, according to the most recent Vanderbilt Unity Index. Read More

Women’s autonomy is a multi-dimensional concept that includes the ability to participate in economic and familial decisions, be involved in a community, and be free from actual or threatened violence. Under this definition, protests against femicide functionally demand greater women’s autonomy. This Insights report seeks to understand key predictors of support for women’s autonomy to better understand the context in which protests for greater autonomy occur. Read More

A pilot program launching at Vanderbilt Blair School of Music this summer will teach middle and high school students how to create music scores for video games. The program, called Music Tech, is designed to pave pathways to Blair, particularly for students in underserved communities who may not otherwise visit campus or interact with the music community.    Read More

In two unique courses offered by the Divinity School, students explore issues around incarceration and punishment alongside 14 death row inmates at Tennessee’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Read More

As the summer blockbuster Elvis hits movie theaters June 24, Vanderbilt professor Kathryn Plummer relives an early career opportunity to play with the legend—and discusses how her experiences recording with some of the music industry’s greats translate into a unique teaching tool in the classroom.    Read More

A four-year longitudinal study of older LGBTQ+ people in the South is being conducted to better identify the sources of stress and resilience for this infrequently studied population. Read More

Vanderbilt students who are part of the inaugural Vanderbilt Choral Scholars program spent a week in cathedrals in the United Kingdom to better understand the community impact of church music in Europe.    Read More

Leaders of Vanderbilt’s LGBTQ+ Policy Lab have provided the first comprehensive evidence on the effects of access to legal same-sex marriage. Their efforts revealed that marriage access impacted the LGBTQ+ community positively in multiple ways. Read More

A $5 million gift from Suzanne Perot McGee, BS’86, Patrick K. McGee, BS’85, and their family to the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University will establish a new center dedicated to analyzing the media, using the cutting-edge tools of data science. Read More

The research of New Testament scholar Richard Batey, BD'58, PhD'61, into the ancient city of Sepphoris in Galilee broadens ideas about Jesus and gives a new perspective for understanding the Gospels. Read More

Chancellor Daniel Diermeier called on all Vanderbilt alumni and current parents to be ambassadors for the university during a virtual “State of the University” address on May 24. During the livestreamed event, Diermeier also participated in a Q&A session moderated by Tim Warnock, BA’84, president of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board. Read More

In a sign that malaise over rising inflation and stressors related to pandemic recovery could be influencing Tennesseans’ attitudes toward elected leaders, support for President Joe Biden and Gov. Bill Lee has dropped among registered voters, according to the most recent statewide Vanderbilt Poll. Read More

Leaders at the forefront of systemic change make a difference by thinking about how to shift old patterns that have kept people marginalized. Thirteen students nominated by deans across Vanderbilt this year got the chance to engage in such big-picture thinking as participants in the Cal Turner Program for Moral Leadership’s interprofessional student fellowship. Read More

Vanderbilt Blair School of Music is among the winners of "DownBeat" magazine’s 45th annual Student Music Awards. For the first time in school history, the program received four awards in the same year, bringing its total number of awards from the magazine to nine over the past four years. Read More

Cindy D. Kam has been named dean of faculty affairs in the College of Arts and Science. Kam, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science and director of the Research on Individuals, Politics and Society Lab, steps into the role as Kamal Saggi, Frances and John Downing Family Professor of Economics, moves into a new leadership position in the Office of the Provost. Read More

Art, research, social justice, and community are the cornerstones that support the life and work of sociology Ph.D. candidate Megan Jordan, MA’19. Read More