Research

An interdisciplinary team from UNC Charlotte has received a $29,000 Research Grant in the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for the project “Arts-based social mobility: Exploring cultural capital in Charlotte, NC.” Sociology Associate Professor Vaughn Schmutz will lead the team, which includes faculty and staff from the College of Arts + Architecture.

UNC Charlotte’s Gerald G. Fox Master of Public Administration program and Clinical Health Psychology doctoral program in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have earned high marks in the U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 rankings.

When the Jamil Niner Student Pantry opened on campus in 2014, professor Nicole Peterson decided to focus a research project on campus, working to determine the depths of the food insecurity problem on the UNC Charlotte campus.

Two infants unearthed in ancient burial mounds in Salango, Ecuador were buried wearing helmets crafted from the skulls of other children, in what researchers believe was a unique practice perhaps intended to protect the infants’ souls during their journey to the afterlife. The research team – composed of UNC Charlotte’s Juengst and Abigail Bythell and Richard Lunniss and Juan José Ortiz Aguilu of Universidad Técnica de Manabí in Ecuador – published their findings in November in the journal Latin American Antiquity.

Unemployment significantly increases the odds of men entering jobs traditionally performed by women. Notably, some men find real job advantages as a result, a study published in the journal “Social Science Research” by Jill Yavorsky of UNC Charlotte and Janette Dill of the University of Minnesota finds.

A book by UNC Charlotte history professor Karen L. Cox about Confederate monuments is one of the first four books under contract in the newly created Marcie Cohen Ferris and William R. Ferris Imprint for high-profile, general-interest books about the American South. Authors chosen are considered among the nation’s leading authors.

Researchers digging at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s ongoing archaeological excavation on Mount Zion in Jerusalem have announced a second significant discovery from the 2019 season – clear evidence of the Babylonian conquest of the city from 587/586 BCE.

Finds at the UNC Charlotte-led archaeological dig on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion confirm previously unverified details from nearly thousand-year-old historical accounts of the First Crusade. This is history that had never been confirmed regarding the five-week siege, conquest, sack and massacre of the Fatimid (Muslim)-controlled city in July of 1099.

Being an informed citizen in a democracy necessitates understanding the people who make, and will be affected by, community decisions. The Civic Eats project seeks to help create a better informed Charlotte citizenry through a focus on the connective potential of foodways – or why we eat, what we eat, and what it means.

James Cook, a professor in the Department of Psychological Science at UNC Charlotte, has received the 2019 Outstanding Educator Award, a top award given by the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA), Division 27 of the American Psychological Association. The award recognizes Cook’s long-standing and far-reaching contributions to community psychology and community research and action through education.