Division of Social Sciences

��ñ�� alum directs the choir dementia can’t silence

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

��ñ�� alum directs the choir dementia can’t silence Rachel Sauer Tue, 10/13/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

Under Jacqueline McCurdy’s direction, Second Verse Choir makes beautiful music where speech science meets the singing voice

Rehearsals for the Second Verse Choir in Denver are punctuated by binders of large-print lyrics and volunteers interspersed among the singers. When Jacqueline McCurdy raises her hands, people who sometimes struggle to find words in conversation open their mouths and find them in song.

McCurdy is the choral director for Second Verse, an ensemble for people living with dementia and memory loss that recently began a new session. The background she brings to her role is rare, including a doctorate in musical arts and a master’s degree in speech, language and hearing sciences from the ��ñ��.

More important is her science-backed understanding of what happens inside the human brain and vocal cords when music is made.

Jacqueline McCurdy is a ��ñ�� speech, language and hearing sciences alumna who directs the Second Verse Choir. (Photo: Second Verse Choir)

Overcoming and rediscovering

McCurdy’s path to the directing podium of Second Verse Choir didn’t start in the sciences.

“Being a speech-language pathologist is a career change for me,” she says. “Prior to pursuing the degree, I was a classically trained singer.”

McCurdy holds a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Iowa. Her on-stage career as a professional performer includes stints in opera, musical theater, orchestra solos and caroling.

However, a vocal injury while pursuing her doctorate would send her in a new direction. Wanting to better understand the mechanics of the voice, she earned a Certificate in Vocology from the National Center for Voice and Speech.

When the pandemic arrived, it introduced yet another speed bump, limiting opportunities for both teaching and performing.

“A colleague in the Opera Colorado chorus suggested I try speech-language pathology,” she recalls. “I started my leveling classes at Metropolitan State University and eventually moved to the graduate program at ��ñ��.”

At ��ñ��, McCurdy found herself embracing the combination of science and music she’d been circling for years.

“I do miss singing and making music the way I had dreamed, but I have loved turning to this field. No regrets,” she says.

During her studies, she encountered research on music as a route to unlocking language centers in the brain. The story unfolded from there.

“As I had been interested in the junction of where music and speech-language pathology meet, I actually suggested starting an aphasia choir at the speech clinic at ��ñ�� as a student,” she says.

As she prepared to bring that idea to her supervisor, she spotted an opening at Second Verse Choir, applied and was hired.

A different kind of rehearsal

A traditional choral director walking into a Second Verse Choir rehearsal might find the environment disorienting. The expectations are different here, but intentionally so.

The participants range widely in both experience and ability, from lifelong singers who read music fluently to those who simply enjoy singing along to their favorite melodies. McCurdy directs voices that have changed with age and strives to meet each singer where they are.

“I have to be flexible and adapt to the vocal ability to each participant and place them where they have comfort,” she says.

Volunteers who are singers themselves sit among the participants throughout rehearsals and performances to offer support. Lyric sheets ensure no one is left reliant on a memory that isn’t what it once was.

Jacqueline McCurdy (front row center) with members of the Second Verse Choir. (Photo: Second Verse Choir)

The culture McCurdy nurtures is one where imperfection is both expected and accepted.

“The focus is less on singing for perfection as it is just to sing the songs for enjoyment,” she says.

Her approach is greatly influenced by her clinical training as a speech-language pathologist.

“I merge therapeutic practices of speech-language pathology into rehearsals by using errorless learning, repetition and patient-led sessions,” McCurdy explains. “I begin rehearsals by having the choir tell me what they would like to work on before I jump into my agenda.”

From there, each song is revisited at every rehearsal, giving participants a chance to engage with the music over-and-over.

Discussions about lyrical meaning, emotional subtext and storytelling are also woven into the music-making to help participants engage on a deeper level. But the most important rule, McCurdy says, is to keep things positive and have fun.

Unlocking the power of music

Scientists have long wondered why music reaches people with memory challenges when language cannot.

McCurdy has seen it happen firsthand.

“One of the participants in Second Verse Choir commented on how sometimes she has trouble expressing herself, but with singing a song it comes out easy,” she says.

Research has confirmed that certain mental capacities are resistant to cognitive decline. Musical memory and response to music are among them, even in the late stages of dementia.

“In the world of memory loss and dementia, research has found that certain activities are resistant to decline, like enjoyment of music and musical preferences,” she says. “Singing can also have deeper benefits like improving behavior, mood and cognitive function (including verbal processing and recall of past events).”

Familiarity is another important element of her work with Second Verse. For the choir’s first concert, she made sure that even if a song wasn’t a favorite, it was at least known.

The result was easy to hear.

“I noticed a stark difference with a song in a medley that was much less familiar for the choir, taking them longer to learn and develop ease of singing. When the song was familiar, the notes came quicker, as did the rhythm and harmony,” she says.

More than singing

Of course, the mission of Second Verse Choir is about much more than the music itself. McCurdy has watched participants arrive guarded and leave transformed after the 15-week session.

“The course of this disease will not be altered by pharmacological intervention. Music, especially singing in a choir, can be an adjunct in treatment to improve mood and bring joy and it reduces loss of identity by improving the way participants see themselves and improving the way they relate to other people,” she says.

Community-building also has become a secondary benefit. As participants gather to rehearse and sing together, they build relationships with others who can relate to the difficulties of living with memory loss.

“I have watched participants grow from not really interacting with others to developing strong relationships with the other members, which has turned the group into a wonderful community,” McCurdy says.

For those who haven’t yet experienced what music can do, McCurdy has a prescription.

“Participating in making music can have a protective effect on cognitive decline—so learn to play an instrument, play in a band, orchestra, or sing in choir,” she says. “And do it as long as you can.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about speech, language and hearing sciences? Show your support.

Under Jacqueline McCurdy’s direction, Second Verse Choir makes beautiful music where speech science meets the singing voice.

Traditional

White

Top photo: Jacqueline McCurdy (left) directs the Second Verse Choir. (Photo: Second Verse Choir)

How timing shapes one of the hardest conversations in medicine

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

How timing shapes one of the hardest conversations in medicine Rachel Sauer Thu, 10/01/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

New research shows that a different kind of breast cancer awareness starts with better communication

A newly diagnosed breast cancer patient sits across from her surgeon to discuss her course of treatment. Moments after the surgeon starts laying out the options, she cuts in to say, “I want both breasts off.”

Surgical guidelines actively discourage this treatment for early-stage, one-sided breast cancer patients with no family history or genetic mutations related to breast cancer. In these cases, removing a healthy breast doesn’t improve survival odds and can raise complication risks.

But it’s also, unmistakably, what this patient wants.

Chase Raymond (left), a ��ñ�� associate professor of linguistics and a member of the clinical faculty in Family Medicine at CU Anschutz, and Virginia Teas Gill (right), professor of sociology emerita at Illinois State University, collaborated on research studying how surgeons and breast cancer patients communicate.

In that moment, the surgeon faces a dilemma. Follow the evidence and risk overriding the patient’s autonomy or honor her request and allow her to forego the treatment option backed by decades of medical research: lumpectomy plus radiation therapy.

This tension plays out in exam rooms around the world every day for breast cancer patients in need of life-saving care. It is also at the center of new research from Chase Raymond, a ��ñ�� associate professor of linguistics and a member of the clinical faculty in Family Medicine at CU Anschutz, and Virginia Teas Gill, professor of sociology emerita at Illinois State University.

October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, is a fitting time to examine that push-and-pull through a new lens.

“Our approach is to look at real recordings of actual consultations, with prior consent, of course, and then we can see what surgeons and patients are really doing,” Raymond says.

In studying the moment-by-moment mechanics of how doctors and patients reach treatment decisions, their paper sparks valuable discussions about patient advocacy and how providers can navigate the balancing act between competing mandates.

A black box, finally opened

Raymond and Gill’s approach relies on Conversation Analysis (CA), a tool used for uncovering the interactional structures that underpin every ordinary conversation.

“This is language and social life—the interactional mechanics that we use to get the activities of everyday life accomplished with one another,” Raymond says.

Gill was drawn to breast cancer surgical consultations for this study because of a historical trend concerning that patient population.

“Historically, breast cancer patients did not have a say in how they were treated. Really, through the 1970s in the United States, this was a decision that was made by physicians,” she says.

For years, radical mastectomy (removal of the breast[s], chest muscles and nearby lymph nodes) was standard treatment even for small tumors.

Today, researchers understand more about what factors influence a patient’s long-term outcomes and which treatment modalities represent the best chance for remission. Treatment options have expanded, giving patients many more choices for their care, including the option to have less-extensive surgery. However, many early-stage patients are now expressing a desire to have both breasts removed.

Yet, what happens between patient and provider in the exam room has largely remained a mystery.

“What goes on when the surgeon and patient talk to each other has been kind of a black box,” Gill says.

“The challenge at issue is, how can patient preferences be balanced with best practice guidelines in this setting?” asks researcher Virginia Teas Gill. (Photo: Unsplash)

She and Raymond wanted to open it.

“We want to understand this process of how surgical treatment options are presented and negotiated, and Conversation Analysis gives us the tools to do that,” Gill adds.

Two mandates

The challenge for physicians isn’t simply whether to make a recommendation for a particular course of treatment. Gill and Raymond note that doing so is often medically necessary.

“The challenge at issue is, how can patient preferences be balanced with best practice guidelines in this setting?” Gill says.

In cases where surgeons and patients may have different perspectives, “both sides are looking for the right thing to do, but figuring out what exactly that is doesn’t happen in an instant. The surgeon and the patient are going to take turns back and forth to ultimately arrive at a decision,” Raymond says. “The sequencing and the ordering of the parts of this conversation are incredibly important.”

‘OK, then you need to hear me out’

In one consultation Raymond and Gill studied, a surgeon walks this tightrope on the record. When the patient asks for both breasts to be removed before being presented with complete information about her options, the surgeon neither grants nor denies the request.

She instead asks the patient to wait and hear the full picture first, including the survival and recurrence statistics associated with all her options.

Gill and Raymond use this example to illustrate how this surgeon works to help the patient make not just her own decision, but a decision that is informed by medical evidence.

“Before granting the request, the surgeon asks the patient to first listen to information that she might not know,” Gill adds.

The duo likens the interaction between patient and provider to stocking a metaphorical pond.

They note that every patient enters the room with “their life experience, their preferences, their values, what they’ve heard from other people and all kinds of media sources.”

Physicians have their own pond filled with information, and the two don’t always fully overlap.

Before a final decision is made, Gill says, the surgeon’s job is to close this information gap. In this case, that means presenting clinical trial data on survival and recurrence, so that the patient has access to the information in their pond. It also means giving the patient an opportunity to ask for more information and express her concerns to complete the surgeon’s picture of what matters to the patient.

That’s why understanding these conversations is so important. There’s a lot at stake, and everyone is trying to achieve the best outcome."

Raymond says, “The patient is thereby reassured that the decision is hers, and will remain hers, but some additional information will be shared before that final decision is made.”

Working both ways

Patients, Gill says, can use the same strategy in reverse, asking to hear more information before accepting a surgeon’s recommendation, or before any medical decision is made.

Raymond notes that physicians are given a limited window of time to convey a tremendous amount of information, with patient satisfaction and complication risks on the line. But no outcome feels good if a patient goes through with a treatment they later regret or leaves the office without understanding all their options.

“That’s why understanding these conversations is so important. There’s a lot at stake, and everyone is trying to achieve the best outcome,” Raymond says.

Conversation Analysis is one way researchers can peek behind the curtain and identify patterns that can help both sides communicate more effectively.

The researchers believe the observations made in their study are important for negotiations beyond the surgical consult room, too.

“This is a dynamic that happens in a lot of contexts. It’s a balancing act that plays out in many different settings, both in and out of medicine,” Gill says.

In the exam room or elsewhere, timing matters. If information can be given before final decisions are made, these priorities don’t have to be in competition. For Gill and Raymond, the study is also a reminder that how patients and doctors talk to each other still matters.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about linguistics? Show your support.

New research shows that a different kind of breast cancer awareness starts with better communication.

Traditional

White

25 years after 9/11: the persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:42:01 +0000

25 years after 9/11: the persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/10/2026 - 13:42

Bradley Worrell

In the weeks following 9/11, ��ñ�� sociologist Lori Peek was in New York City hearing the stories of Muslim Americans navigating suspicion, hostility and questions of identity and belonging

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as smoke rose from the burning World Trade Center and the United States struggled to comprehend an unprecedented terrorist attack, sociologist Lori Peek found herself asking a different question: Who would be hurt next?

At the time, Peek was a doctoral student at the ��ñ��’s Natural Hazards Center, where she studied disasters and how they affect vulnerable communities. As the nation focused on the destruction of the World Trade Center and the thousands of lives lost, Peek recognized another crisis was unfolding at the same time: anti-Muslim sentiment was quickly spreading across the country.

For Peek, this issue was not simply academic. While pursuing her master’s degree, she became close friends with an Afghan American woman whose family arrived in the United States as refugees. As public mistrust and anger quickly intensified, Peek worried about her friend and others being viewed through the lens of fear and blame.

��ñ�� researcher Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center, interviewed Muslims in New York City about anti-Muslim backlash after 9/11.

When her academic advisor informed her that she would be traveling to New York City to study the disaster, Peek already knew the topic she wanted to pursue. Rather than document the attack itself, she set out to record how Muslim Americans, particularly young, second-generation Muslims, were experiencing the nation’s response.

Those interviews eventually formed the foundation for her first book, Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans After 9/11. Peek says those interviews preserved the voices of people navigating anger, discrimination and uncertainty while insisting that the actions of a few religious extremists did not define their faith, their identities or their place in America.

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches Friday, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine spoke with Peek about what she learned in speaking with Muslim Americans immediately after the terrorist attacks and why she believes those lessons remain important today. The following interview was condensed and lightly edited for style.

Question: How did your research on the experiences of Muslim Americans following 9/11 come together?

Peek: Back in 2001, I was a PhD student in sociology, and I was working at the Natural Hazards Center here at ��ñ��. Like the graduate students before me, I assumed I’d write a dissertation on natural hazards or disasters. That was one of the key expectations of being a research assistant here at the Center.

Then 9/11 happened. I came in that morning and my advisor, who was the director of the Natural Hazards Center at the time, looked at me and said, ‘I hope you know what you are going to do, because you’re going to New York City.’

As a sociologist, I was very interested in socially marginalized populations in disasters. That’s still my area of expertise. Even in that disaster, my immediate thought was, ‘Who is going to be hurt? What are the effects going to be for those who are already being blamed?’

Did 9/11 fundamentally reinvent U.S. policy in the Middle East? No, says ��ñ�� historian John M. Willis, a scholar of the modern Middle East. In fact, "promoting democracy or human rights has never been a priority for the U.S. in the Middle East," he says.

Learn more

I was also influenced by my personal connections. When I was a master’s student, I had become close friends with an Afghan American woman, who wore the full head covering, whose family had come to America as refugees.

When 9/11 happened, and I had to figure out what to study, I brought together my scholarly commitment to understanding social inequality and vulnerability in disasters along with my personal care for people in the Muslim community.

Question: Did you experience difficulties in attempting to speak with Muslim Americans in the environment of distrust and suspicion following 9/11?

Peek: It took a lot of what we call ‘shoe leather sociology.’ It meant making calls, sending emails and traveling around and meeting people once I got to New York City. There were practical considerations about how to find people willing to talk. Muslim student associations were a great way to gain access to groups of young, second-generation Muslim Americans, and then they helped me to meet other people.

Interviews Lori Peek conducted very soon after 9/11 built the foundation for her book Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11.

As a non-Muslim, people are often curious about how I was received. I think there were a lot of reasons people were willing to speak with me. I was only 26 years old at the time, and so I was a similar age as my participants. We also shared the same status as students or recent graduates in the case of a few.

Once I got on the ground and started talking to people, they often said, ‘It’s a good thing you’re talking to me, because there’s no way my parents or grandparents would have ever talked to you.’ They were too scared.

In other instances, interviewees would tell me, ‘It helps that you’re not Muslim because we’re trying to explain that we’re not all terrorists, but when that message comes from us, people may dismiss it.’ If someone outside of the faith is willing to take the time to listen, that matters.

Question: What did Muslim Americans share with you about experiencing backlash after 9/11? Also, did they feel like they had experienced discrimination before 9/11?

Peek: Like many members of religious or ethnic minority communities, participants often had stories from before 9/11 about insensitive comments, misunderstandings or stereotypes. It wasn’t as though life had been completely free of those experiences. But they generally described those earlier incidents as ignorance or unfamiliarity with the Islamic faith.

After 9/11, the situation felt completely different. There was fear from the public, often stoked by the media, regarding people who were perceived to share the identity of those responsible for the attacks. … Some participants who had grown up in diverse communities and rarely felt singled out suddenly found themselves wondering whether they were being watched, targeted or even physically endangered. Those fears were quantitatively and qualitatively different from anything they had experienced before.

Question: Did young Muslim Americans’ experiences differ depending upon gender, race, ethnicity or other factors?

Peek: All of those things mattered. None of us have only one identity. At any given moment, multiple identities operate together. In my study, Muslim women often expressed greater fear of physical violence because they felt more vulnerable and were also more visible due to their headscarves.

In addition to gender, race, ethnicity and immigration history also mattered. For example, I interviewed some white converts to Islam who felt that being white offered certain protections, but those protections seemed to disappear once they put on a headscarf because the clothing is such a symbolic marker of the faith.

All of those identity characteristics matter, but after 9/11, there was also a strong unifying effect around the faith itself. In sociology, we talk about identity salience, the idea that identity under the greatest threat becomes the most important one. After 9/11, being Muslim became a highly stigmatized identity—and that identity was pushed to the forefront of many young Muslims’ lives.

Before 9/11, many participants told me they felt they could be both Muslim and American without contradiction. Afterward, some felt society was forcing them to choose. One participant told me, ‘If I’m going to have to choose, I’m going to choose to be Muslim.’ That shift was very real.

Question: Did the backlash after 9/11 change the ways in which young Muslim Americans thought about being American?

Peek: Absolutely. I interviewed 140 people for the study, and I’ve remained in contact with some of them over the years. The effects were profound.

For some, it changed their educational paths and careers. People switched majors, pursued international relations, entered public service or sought careers where they felt they could bridge cultures and make a difference.

It also influenced how they thought about belonging and integration. Historically, immigrants tend to assimilate more easily when they are not stigmatized. When communities remain under suspicion or attack, that process changes.

I observed that some participants became more committed to living in communities where they felt safe speaking their heritage languages or marrying within their faith. I didn’t study those choices systematically, but they were themes that emerged in people’s stories.

Even now, a generation later, younger Muslim Americans who read Behind the Backlash tell me the experiences still resonate. They may not have lived through 9/11, but they recognize some of the same dynamics.

"Before 9/11, many participants told me they felt they could be both Muslim and American without contradiction," says Lori Peek. "Afterward, some felt society was forcing them to choose." (Photo: Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee)

Question: It sounds like, for at least some of the people you spoke with, they deepened their connection with their Muslim identity after 9/11?

Peek: Yes, absolutely. In my work, I describe three stages of identity development. First is an ascribed identity, the identity you are born into. Second is chosen or learned identity, where a person actively embraces and practices their faith. Then, after 9/11, many participants entered what I called the identity of crisis.

They didn’t suddenly become Muslim because of 9/11. They were already Muslim. But after the attacks, that identity became the most important and unavoidable part of how they experienced the world.

As a result, many increased their involvement with Muslim student associations, attended mosque more regularly when they felt safe doing so and sought out connections with other Muslims who understood what they were going through.

Understandably, during that time of upheaval they wanted community, support, information and solidarity. They also wanted to serve as a counterpoint to the stigmatizing narratives surrounding Islam and Muslims in the moment.

Question: Based upon what your extensive conversations with Muslim Americans after 9/11, what are a few of the top things you think are worth sharing?

Peek: First, the consequences of 9/11 have obviously been so enduring for so many people. The effects reach from geopolitics all the way down to individual lives. There is a reason we’re still talking about it decades later, and it is important to think about the many and varied consequences for so many people.

Second, I hope people understand the importance of listening to and learning from others. Many of the stereotypes participants faced didn’t begin with 9/11, but the attacks intensified them.

One thing that stood out to me was often Muslim women said, ‘Nobody is forcing me to wear this (the hijab). In fact, concerned family members immediately after 9/11 were telling me to take it off and I chose not to.’ Yet, even when they explained that repeatedly, they felt some stereotypes remained deeply embedded in public consciousness.

At the same time, I was struck by the grace many participants showed. They often felt that people were acting out of fear or misunderstanding rather than pure hatred. They wanted to educate, engage and correct misconceptions.

The persistence of stereotypes is also an important lesson, but so is the persistence of people’s willingness to build understanding despite them.

My study was just one within a much larger body of scholarship about 9/11, but I think the broader question it raises remains important: What happens when immigrant communities or minority communities come under suspicion or attack?

What interests me is not just the theory, but the lived experience. How are people affected? How do they respond? What does it mean for their daily lives?

The United States is an extraordinarily diverse country, and one of the enduring questions we continue to face is how hundreds of millions of people from different backgrounds can live together, understand one another and build a shared future? Those questions remain as important today as they were when I began this research.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about sociology? Show your support.

In the weeks following 9/11, ��ñ�� sociologist Lori Peek was in New York City hearing the stories of Muslim Americans navigating suspicion, hostility and questions of identity and belonging.

Traditional

White

Top image: Pexels

Firefighter deaths afflict surviving colleagues, research finds

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 23:06:28 +0000

Firefighter deaths afflict surviving colleagues, research finds Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/08/2026 - 17:06

Researcher Robert Scott recommends expanded mental-health training, stronger support systems after fatalities and improved benefits for private-sector firefighters.

Clint Talbott

��ñ�� sociologist shines light on understudied area of wildfire research: how wildland firefighting fatalities affect the people on the front lines

Robert Scott started fighting wildfires so he could pay for college. While conducting graduate-level research in 2013, the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona overran and killed 19 firefighters in one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history.

At the time, Scott was researching how firefighters' perceptions of risk change over time. But in the wake of the Yarnell Hill tragedy, the topic felt much more personal.

“I had seen how that was affecting my crew members, how it was affecting me,” he says. Describing this as a pivotal event, Scott resolved to focus his PhD research on firefighters’ responses to their colleagues’ deaths.

Robert Scott an instructional associate in the ��ñ�� Arts and Sciences Residential Academic Programs.

Another key experience happened a year earlier while working on an Idaho wildfire shortly after a firefighter had been killed by a falling tree.

“I got to see and experience what that’s like, being at a fatality fire several days after a death has occurred,” Scott says. “What happens in briefings, how firefighters are processing being out in the field at that time.”

His 2025 doctoral dissertation at the ��ñ�� found that firefighter fatalities can inflict psychological wounds with long-lasting effects on crews, families and fire organizations.

Scott, a sociologist who is an instructional associate in the ��ñ�� Arts and Sciences Residential Academic Programs, is originally from Ontario, Canada, and became a firefighter while attending college in the United States.

Based on in-depth interviews with 37 firefighters across the American West, Scott’s research documents trauma, grief, survivor guilt, anxiety, hypervigilance and, in some cases, suicidal thoughts among firefighters who experienced the deaths of colleagues.

Scott's dissertation, When Counterparts Die: Wildland Firefighters' Responses to Line of Duty Deaths, fills what he calls a significant gap in wildfire research.

“Focusing on firefighters' responses to peer fatalities in the line of duty is an area of research that's extraordinarily understudied,” Scott says.

The research comes as wildfires burn larger areas of the West. The number of wildfires has declined in recent years, but the size and intensity of them has increased.

Data from the National Interagency Fire Center and National Wildfire Coordinating Group reports 697 wildland firefighting fatalities in the United States between 1983 and 2023, an average of about 17 deaths per year. Medical emergencies accounted for about 27% of those deaths, followed by aviation accidents (20%), burnovers and entrapments (20%), vehicle accidents (19%), hazard trees (6%) and other causes (7%).

Four levels of involvement

Through interviews with firefighters ranging from rookies to veterans with decades of experience, Scott developed a framework describing four levels of involvement in firefighter fatalities.

“Some firefighters probably could have better addressed their conditions afterwards had they known a bit more about what was going on,” says ��ñ�� researcher Robert Scott.

The most severe reactions were associated with primary involvement: personally knowing the deceased, witnessing death and dying or feeling implicated in a fatality.

Those firefighters often described consequences that extended years beyond the incident.

“What I found striking was just how much direct involvement in fatality incidents affected the daily lives of some firefighters who I talked to,” Scott says. “For some, there are ongoing chronic struggles, periods of suffering.”

Several firefighters reported persistent hypervigilance and anxiety on the fireline long after a fatality. Others described impacts on family life.

“The work was definitely affecting family life,” Scott says. “And it seemed also to be coming back into work life.”

One finding was that some firefighters continued working after traumatic incidents even when they were still struggling psychologically.

“Some would experience random bouts of anxiety in the field,” Scott says. “Some would be extremely hypervigilant for many years.”

'They knew something was changing'

Scott found that firefighters recognized changes in themselves after a fatality. “But they didn’t necessarily have a framework to fully understand what was happening to them.”

That happened, he argues, partly because firefighters historically received little training in grief, trauma and mental health.

Researcher Robert Scott recommends expanded mental-health training, stronger support systems after fatalities and improved benefits for private-sector firefighters.

One firefighter interviewed for the study experienced suicidal thoughts and feelings of worthlessness for a long duration. “He thought that it was normal until he opened up to a friend,” who assured him otherwise.

Another firefighter worked with military veterans struggling with suicidal thoughts before recognizing similar symptoms in himself.

“It took time for the full realization to come through,” Scott says. “Something’s going on here, and I need to get help.”

Scott believes that earlier education could have helped many firefighters recognize warning signs sooner.

“Some firefighters probably could have better addressed their conditions afterwards had they known a bit more about what was going on,” he says.

A culture of silence

The study suggests cultural factors have long discouraged firefighters from openly discussing emotional struggles.

“For a very long time, and still, the field has been primarily men,” Scott says. “There was the sort of soldier-on attitude and be mentally tough attitude that existed.” Additionally, there have been few research opportunities for firefighters.

As a result, many firefighters have kept their struggles private.

The interviews revealed that some firefighters grappled with severe trauma responses but disclosed them only to specific close family members, friends or helping professionals. That silence made conducting the interviews particularly meaningful.

“I’m so grateful that they opened up to me,” he says. Scott believes that being a firefighter himself, knowing the training and culture and being sensitive to the firefighters’ experiences helped them trust him. “They go through a lot, and they continue to.”

The people who remain

Much wildfire fatality research focuses on what went wrong during an incident, organizational responses and cause-of-death trends. Scott’s research focuses on the firefighters who continue working after various levels of involvement in fatality incidents, which is understudied.

“A big focus of the literature is about what went wrong, what happened and how can we mitigate that in the future,” he says.

But, “What about the people who are there and go back to work after? Maybe they take some time off, but they go back.”

That has implications not only for individual well-being but for the functioning of organizations.

“How organizations perform changes after these events,” Scott says. "People have been influenced by the events, and they continue to go to work.”

Recommendations for change

Scott’s dissertation recommends expanded mental-health training, stronger support systems after fatalities and improved benefits for private-sector firefighters.

Scott also argues that discussions about wildfire policy should factor in firefighter mental health alongside ecological and economic questions.

For decades, wildfire management debates have centered on suppression costs, forest health and fuel loads. “What's been left out is mental health,” he says.

Ultimately, Scott hopes his research might help firefighters better understand experiences that have often remained private.

“I didn't undertake the project to become known,” he says. “If I could have done it anonymously, I would have. It was about a very serious topic that I think matters and that I could contribute to in a valuable way for the fire community.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about sociology? Show your support.

��ñ�� sociologist shines light on understudied area of wildfire research: how wildland firefighting fatalities affect the people on the front lines.

Traditional

White

All photos courtesy Robert Scott

Remembering Dolly in her coat of many colors

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:07:14 +0000

Remembering Dolly in her coat of many colors Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/28/2026 - 09:07

Rachel Sauer

For ��ñ�� scholar Shawn Trenell O’Neal, the outpouring of grief over Dolly Parton’s death in Black communities bespeaks the legend’s humanity and allyship

Shawn Trenell O’Neal was taking an afternoon walk Tuesday when Joanne Corson, program manager for the ��ñ�� Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and his dear friend, texted him, asking him to call her right away.

He did, and the first thing she said was, “We just lost Dolly.”

There was no question of which Dolly. Is there any other? “So, we spent the next half an hour talking about Dolly, and right after that I called my mother,” he recalls.

Shawn O'Neal is a ��ñ�� assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and the Center for African and African American Studies associate faculty director.

“My mother and the Black women in my family who raised me were big fans of Dolly Parton, and not necessarily her music, which makes it even more compelling. They were fans of who she was.”

Since she died Tuesday at age 80, people worldwide have united in grief and celebration of a singular songwriter, musician, philanthropist, actress and all-around icon and legend, frequently citing a 2019 New York Times headline: “Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton.”

It should be no surprise, says O’Neal, an assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies, musicologist and CAAAS associate faculty director, that Black communities are mourning Parton just as deeply as fan bases, including country music fan bases, that traditionally have veered white.

O’Neal points to a 2020 interview Parton had with Billboard magazine, not long after George Floyd’s death and as the Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum. “I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen,” Parton told the magazine. “And of course Black lives matter! Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”

“At that point we are screaming their names into the air, we don't know what else to do anymore, we are desperate,” O’Neal says. “And to have someone like that step up in that moment, someone who didn’t politicize things, who kept out of politics, but she came out at that moment and said something when we needed it the most?

“She didn't have to do anything and we still would have loved her, but no, she stepped up at that moment and did that, and it just reminded me again, oh, this is why the women in my family made me understand that I have to love this woman.”

Question: Since they weren’t really listening to Dolly’s music, what was it about her that the women in your family loved?

O’Neal: I think it started with her contradictions. She’s got the hair and the nails, the five-inch heels, sequins and rhinestones, you know? But then she comes in with this incredible mind, this talent. And Black people have to live with contradictions all the time, so I think a lot of Black American women were seeing her, like, ‘Oh, you tricky. I see how you playing these dudes, with the heels and the dress and the hair and everything else, and you just playing these dudes like a French horn.’ For the women in my family, Dolly Parton was someone who put a smile on their face.

Question: Do you remember when you first became aware of Dolly?

O’Neal: Around the time 9 to 5 came out, which was in 1980. We didn’t go see it in the theater, but we had cable television and (the women in my family) were so excited to watch this movie. So, I sat there and watched this movie with them, and they just loved it.

I realize now there’s layers to this. The first thing I realize is that we have to put it in a historical context. The movie 9 to 5 is all about women in the workforce and taking a stand to discrimination and taking a stand to misogyny, and all the women in my family worked. My grandmother and my great aunt, they were nurses and nurses’ aides at the VA hospital at Great Lakes Naval Base, my mother was a lab technician and my great-grandmother cleaned houses for rich people in Lake Forest, Illinois, and Highland Park, Illinois.

And this was during the Reagan years, where Ronald Reagan was destroying Black families, just eating us up alive, and at the same time Black women were really trying to insert themselves into the workplace. For the women in my family, at least, I think that movie empowered them, seeing Dolly have to put up with some of the things they were having to put up with. And the song ‘9 to 5’! I mean, that song is submerged in gospel. That line where she’s like, ‘It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it,’ is that not right out of church?

"This lady actually loves people and she’s actually sticking her neck out for women, for people regardless of their race and ethnicity," says ��ñ�� scholar Shawn Trenell O'Neal.

Question: So, you came to Dolly’s music on your own?

O’Neal: Yes, we watched the movie and I was like, ‘OK, who is this Dolly Parton?’ I gotta now figure out who this Dolly Parton was, so I started listening to some of her music. I remember hearing ‘Jolene’ and, oh, wow. And it was interesting, too, because a lot of Black R&B songs at that time, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, were about that subject matter—like, ‘I'll be damned if you come in here and mess with my family or my man, you got another think coming.’

Question: Speaking of ‘Jolene,’ you mentioned you played it during your African American History class Wednesday. Why was that?

O’Neal: For starters, because I'm the kind of person that likes to keep (my students) guessing. So, I put it on, I'm blasting it as I'm getting my notes and stuff out and together, and I know they're kind of looking around at each other like, ‘What's going on here?’ What I wanted to do is use it as an icebreaker, because I wanted to talk about the fact that I was raised by these amazing Black women who taught me to honor and love people based on their actions and not the color of their skin or whatever ethnicity that they were a part of.

We were going into a very, very difficult chapter about the triangular trade of the enslavement of African people, so I wanted that icebreaker of what Dolly represented.

Question: You mentioned that your great-grandmother would have called Dolly ‘a good Christian.’ Why is that?

O’Neal: She lived it. My great-grandmother would have said Dolly was a real Christian; like, this lady actually loves people and she’s actually sticking her neck out for women, for people regardless of their race and ethnicity. She was there for people, for humanity, so the women in my family saw her as a true humanitarian.

So, you know, Dolly let Whitney Houston sing (‘I Will Always Love You’) and she made over $10 million in royalties from Whitney’s version, but you know what? She never even collected that money. You know what she did with that money? She put it back into a historically Black neighborhood in Nashville. She was like, ‘This Black woman, Whitney Houston, took my song and sang it into the stratosphere, and that’s who deserves this money, is these communities.’ I mean, who does that? Only Dolly! She built an amusement park so people in the community where she grew up could have jobs. She sent something like 300 million books to kids.

Question: What are you remembering most about Dolly this week?

O’Neal: I think about, you know, I was a young Black man growing up in the Chicago area, and I adored her. I adored her ability to be brash, her ability to be a shrewd businesswoman. Here she was building an empire, but at the same time, going back to that idea of contradictions, being in some ways understated about it.

I think as Black folks we could see ourselves in her. We had to look sharp because we didn't have a lot else to go on. We had to roll in the Cadillac or the Lincoln because we didn't have a lot else to make us feel proud, but that didn’t really get to what was happening beneath the surface. And I know that for Black women, that level of beauty that she exuded, getting the hair done, getting the nails, all of it, they respected that. But they saw she was so much more. There were all these other things going on that were unsaid, but people knew about her, and the women in my family knew. And they were just, like … you weren't about to mush-mouth no Dolly Parton up in my house. You just weren't.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about ethnic studies? Show your support.

For ��ñ�� scholar Shawn Trenell O’Neal, the outpouring of grief over Dolly Parton’s death in Black communities bespeaks the legend’s humanity and allyship.

Traditional

White

Top image: Dolly Parton onstage at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia. (Photo: Leeann Cafferata/Wikimedia Commons)

Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:44:04 +0000

Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:44

The New Safe Confinement structure placed over reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2016. (Photo: iStock)

Bradley Worrell

��ñ�� political scientist Sarah Wilson Sokhey says the underlying lesson of the nuclear catastrophe is that the risk has not gone away—and that such disasters don’t recognize national borders

Forty years ago this month, Soviet officials issued their first formal report on the Chornobyl nuclear disaster to the International Atomic Energy Agency—four months after the April 26, 1986, meltdown of Nuclear Reactor No. 4 in Pripyat, Ukraine, released radioactivity across large portions of Europe.

Beyond being the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe on record, one of the most defining aspects of the disaster was the Soviet government’s deliberate decision to withhold information about it immediately afterward, according to Sarah Wilson Sokhey, an associate professor of political science at the ��ñ�� who has spent more than 20 years studying the politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

In retrospect, Sokhey says the decision was not surprising given how the Soviet government operated as an organization.

Sarah Wilson Sokhey is a ��ñ�� associate professor of political science who has spent more than 20 years studying the politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

“It was a very hierarchical system with a very specific chain of command, and there were strong incentives not to report problems and accidents or to minimize their effects,” she explains.

Sokhey notes that it’s not unusual for governments to withhold some information during a crisis to avoid creating unnecessary alarm, but she argues that was not an adequate explanation in the case of Chornobyl.

“If we had a more charitable interpretation of it, we might say they were trying to prevent a panic, but that’s not what was happening in this case because there were people at the heart of the accident who knew right at the beginning how bad this was and how bad it could get,” she says.

Not only did Soviet authorities not notify Western countries near Ukraine, but they didn’t let their own citizens know about what happened in the immediate aftermath. That included nearby residents, who were not evacuated until 36 hours later—even though government officials who were directly involved understood the situation was severe, Sokhey says.

According to the World Nuclear Association, two Chornobyl workers died instantly from the physical blast of the explosion and building collapse on the night of the accident and 28 firefighters and emergency workers died within the first few weeks from acute radiation syndrome.

Meanwhile, the Soviet republic of Belarus, located near the disaster zone, also experienced significant fallout. Sokhey says Belarussian scientists observed elevated radiation levels and that certain areas later saw increased rates of thyroid cancer, particularly in children.

While the Soviet government initially remained mum about the accident, Sokhey says efforts to control information collided with the reality that the disaster could not be confined within Ukraine’s borders. As elevated radiation levels were detected in Sweden and other Western countries, it was no longer possible to keep things under wraps.

Fallout from the nuclear disaster

In the weeks and months following the Soviet government’s first announcement of the nuclear disaster, more information came to light that showed just how serious the accident was, Sokhey says.

Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant several months after the disaster. (Photo: Ukrainian Society for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries)

“What we know now is that this was not just a small fire and it could not be quickly contained,” she says, contrasting that information with initial government reports. “It was a meltdown of the core of the nuclear reactor, so it was very serious.”

The consequences became obvious relatively quickly.

“They not only evacuated Pripyat, but they didn’t allow people to return,” Sokhey says. “And it was very soon after obvious that they would need to engage in a long-term cleanup effort and have a sarcophagus (containment structure) that was built around the reactor.”

As a proactive measure, the government later resettled 116,000 people who lived within a 30 kilometer radius of the nuclear power plant.

As a result of the disaster, Chornobyl spurred further global debate over the safety of nuclear energy, coming after Three Mile Island in the United States and before Fukushima in Japan, Sokhey notes.

Although the scale of Chornobyl disaster was ultimately acknowledged by the Soviet government, debates over the causes continued for years.

“In the Soviet system, there was a longer process that played out to pin the blame on who, exactly, was responsible within the system,” Sokhey says. “The acknowledgement of the scale of what happened, the accident itself and the conditions under which it happened came not very long after the accident because it had to.”

Initially, blame centered on the plant operators, who shut down the reactor’s safety systems to run tests. Later, questions were raised about the design and construction of the reactor.

A loss of trust

While Soviet officials eventually acknowledged the scale of the crisis and undertook a massive cleanup effort, many Soviet citizens felt deeply betrayed by the initial denials and the delay, Sokhey says.

She attended an event in Denver earlier this year hosted by the National Association of Ukrainian Women to remember the disaster, where some attendees shared their experiences. Sokhey says one woman who lived in Kyiv at the time recalled that large public events continued in the country’s capital days after the Chornobyl explosion, potentially exposing thousands of people to conditions that many now believe should have prompted caution and limited outdoor activity. The woman reported that some information regarding Chornobyl spread via word of mouth and rumors, but that governmental official remained mum at the time.

“For Ukrainians in particular, Chornobyl feeds into a long historical narrative of atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people by the Soviet and Russian system,” Sokhey says. “You’ll hear people in Ukraine talk about it in that vein. They’ll talk about the mass starvation that happened in the Stalinist period with Holodomor and they’ll talk about Chornobyl, because these are seen as a pattern of disregard, or even a pattern of hatred, toward Ukrainian life.”

In retrospect, it is fair to say that Chornobyl deeply damaged the Soviet Union’s reputation both at home and abroad, Sokhey says.

“I think it very much fed into the narrative that the Soviet system was corrupt, outdated and dishonest,” she says. “The public caught them in a very dramatic example of both incompetence and outdated technology and not being honest about the level of the disaster.”

At the same time, Sokhey cautions against the idea that Chornobyl was the catalyst for the Soviet Union’s collapse.

The New Safe Confinement structure placed over reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2016. (Photo: iStock)

At the time of the accident, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing sweeping reforms through “Perestroika” (restructuring) and “Glasnost” (transparency). Economic restructuring was producing disruptions and shortages, while increasing openness allowed citizens to express their frustrations more freely, Sokhey says. She adds that the Soviet war in Afghanistan was draining resources and costing lives, while several Soviet republics including Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states were becoming restive.

“All of those things were working together to undermine the Soviet system,” Sokhey says.

Lessons for today

For Sokhey, one of the most enduring lessons of Chornobyl is that environmental disasters can affect everyone, regardless of political boundaries. She argues that the world must pay close attention when authoritarian governments are responsible for reporting information about disasters because the incentives to conceal bad news can delay effective responses and increase harm.

Sokhey says that lesson resonates today, as Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has renewed concerns about nuclear safety in the region. She points to ongoing worries surrounding both the Chornobyl site, which has been damaged in the fighting, as well as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, which is the largest nuclear plant in Europe and which was captured by Russia during the early days of the invasion. Sokhey notes that another nuclear-related crisis could happen at any time.

Forty years after the world learned that something had gone horribly wrong in a small town in northern Ukraine, Sokhey says the radiation may have diminished, but its lessons have not.

“What happened at Chornobyl remains a risk today, and I think it teaches us the danger of what happens when authoritarian regimes are faced with crises—especially ones that affect people outside of their own country.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about political science? Show your support.

Traditional

White

Top photo: iStock

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:55:11 +0000

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/24/2026 - 14:55

Cody DeBos

��ñ�� researchers ask who decides to stay behind when climate disaster strikes

“I don’t know when I floated to the river bank—but I survived. Remember, to live here, you have to be brave as crocodiles in water and tigers on land. But the peace of living here will not be found anywhere else.”

That’s how a grandmother in coastal Bangladesh once described surviving a flood to her 17-year-old granddaughter.

This type of survival knowledge, passed on from generation to generation, is one thread in a much larger tapestry of climate-driven migration. Lori Hunter, director of the ��ñ�� Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), has been working to better understand the phenomenon and how to support the people it affects.

Lori Hunter is a ��ñ�� professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, women are most commonly the ones who stay behind when disaster strikes. Hunter says this partially comes down to socialization and the process of “learning” gender and what’s expected of us.

“Some of what we learn through this process relates to migration—what is seen as ‘acceptable’ in terms of men and women relocating,” she says.

Of course, the full picture is more nuanced.

Connecting the pieces

Hunter’s interest in people, places, and their connection to the environment goes back more than 30 years to her days in the Pacific Northwest.

“I lived in Seattle for many years, and my original curiosity was fueled by seeing the region’s demographic change as related to high levels of in-migration back in the 1980s,” she says.

Environmental amenities were clearly a draw to the area, leading to a boom in population growth that has significantly altered the region and its natural resources.

Yet, as Hunter puts it, “migration researchers just weren’t integrating broader environmental context into their investigations of human movement.”

That initial spark eventually led to a more focused interest in gender and specifically how it relates to human migration driven by climate change.

After co-authoring a paper on the subject that was published in 2011, Hunter was asked to create a white paper that would be included in World Bank’s Groundswell report.

“At the time there was virtually no research on the three-way intersection of displacement, climate change, and gender. We pulled together scholarship on 1) disasters and gender, 2) disasters and migration, 3) gender and risk perceptions and other related sub-topics to inform a discussion of potential connections,” she says.

More than a decade later, Hunter’s work has evolved into an examination of not only who leaves when climate disaster upends normal life, but equally those who choose not to or are forced to stay.

Forgetting about those who stay

The gap in both relocation by gender and the study of non-migration itself is at the heart of Hunter’s newest work with lead author Bishawjit Mallick, a IBS Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow. Published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, the paper details a framework called Intergenerational Gendered Environmental Non-Migration, or IGEN.

Hunter explains that human populations change through three processes. Birth, death, and migration all have a part to play.

“Demographers have long studied migration as an outcome (just like births and deaths). Who moves? Why do they move? What are the implications of those moves?” Hunter says.

“Although some women aspire to leave, many lack the agency to make such mobility decisions,” says ��ñ�� researcher Lori Hunter. (Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran/United Nations)

But despite all the research, there is a blind spot.

“The question of who doesn’t move just hasn’t been on the table. Perhaps because most people don’t move so it’s more interesting to consider who does,” she adds.

Yet, in locations facing repeated natural disasters, understanding who stays (and why) is anything but academic. Hunter’s IGEN framework suggests one reason for those decisions is the influence of gender roles that have been reinforced across generations.

“Living under a patriarchal social structure, in some cultural settings, women are often expected to move in with their in-laws after marriage. This can promote a situation where men become the primary decisionmaker, diminishing women’s agency,” Hunter explains.

“If women are more likely to remain at home as a result of cultural expectations but also have less access to income or other resources as a consequence of patriarchy, they become increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of disasters,” she continues.

As these factors compound, women living in high-risk areas may be pressed into staying somewhere they don’t really want to be regardless of their preference.

“Although some women aspire to leave, many lack the agency to make such mobility decisions,” Hunter says.

In her view, this is exactly why the research gap needs closing.

“The gap really does matter, and the example of climate-related disasters demonstrates why,” Hunter says. “It’s important to understand who is staying in risky areas—and why—in order to provide appropriate support within local communities and reduce vulnerabilities.”

Inherited ground

Of course, “staying” isn’t a decision defined by gender alone. Inheritance also plays a significant role in keeping someone rooted in place, despite logic and scientific evidence pointing them elsewhere.

“Some people choose to stay in a risky locale (voluntary non-migration), even if they understand the risk,” Hunter says.

During an earlier project’s fieldwork, one forty-three-year-old fisherman said “Our ancestors built this house for us. We want to stay here. It’s a very important part of our life. This village is our identity.”

This can help explain why, after devastating floods and cyclones, many families choose to rebuild on the exact same plot of land that was washed away.

Not everyone gets the choice, though.

“On the other hand, some stay in a risky locale because they’re unable to move (involuntary), such as perhaps lacking the funds to resettle elsewhere,” Hunter says.

This is often the case when changing environmental patterns have already lowered the value of a family’s home, or when affordability has put land elsewhere out of reach.

I think it’s important to consider the reasons why someone might be staying. We have a tendency to blame individuals if they remain in risky locales without considering why they remain."

Quoted from the paper, a seventy-one-year-old housewife from Bangladesh told the research team, “So many people are moving from here by buying land in other places, but we don’t have the ability to buy land.”

A 43-year-old housewife echoed the sentiment, saying, “If I had money, I would have bought land far away.”

For many in these communities, the reason for non-migration falls somewhere in the middle. The choice is often shaped as much by a lack of resources and agency as by attachment to a home.

Rethinking the motive

Hunter hopes that more research into non-migration amid the many challenges posed by environmental harm and gender norms will help reframe the conversation.

“I think it’s important to consider the reasons why someone might be staying. We have a tendency to blame individuals if they remain in risky locales without considering why they remain,” she says.

In the same vein, Hunter says much migration isn’t due to choice.

“Most people want to stay where they are. If climate-related pressures are combined with other economic and/or socio-cultural challenges, people might be forced to make a move they’d rather not,” she says.

Shifting the focus from blame to understanding is something for everyone to consider. Hunter also hopes this mindset is embraced by those with the power to enact change at the highest levels.

“I would love it if policymakers recognized that many people do not want to migrate but are forced to do so if climate pressures make their current lives untenable,” she says. “Supporting individuals and families to stay in their origin communities could reduce the tide of migration.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about sociology? Show your support.

��ñ�� researchers ask who decides to stay behind when climate disaster strikes.

Traditional

White

Top image: iStock

Why remembering the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 matters today

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:44:28 +0000

Why remembering the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 matters today Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/29/2026 - 09:44

A cabin lodged on a private bridge just below Drake, Colorado, following the Big Thompson Flood in 1976. (Photo: W.R. Hansen/U.S. Geological Survey)

Bradley Worrell

��ñ�� Natural Hazards Center Director Lori Peek says there are still lessons to be learned from the devastating flash flood, 50 years later

Fifty years ago this week, a beautiful summer evening in Colorado ended in catastrophe.

On the night of July 31, 1976, a powerful thunderstorm stalled over the Big Thompson Canyon west of Loveland, unleashing a torrential rainfall in a matter of hours. The resulting flash flood killed 144 people and became the single deadliest disaster in the state’s history.

For Lori Peek, professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center at the ��ñ��, the flood’s most important legacy may be the lessons that emerged from it—and the realization that those lessons still require attention today.

Lori Peek is a ��ñ�� professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center.

“Anniversary events like this one are so important because they serve as moments for communities to come together and reflect upon what was lost, what we’ve learned and what we still need to do to become more resilient in the future,” she says.

A perfect storm of human, environmental and built factors

While the Big Thompson Flood is often remembered for its meteorological extremes, Peek says that disasters are never caused by nature alone.

“One of the things we say in this field of study is that there are natural hazards, but there’s no such thing as a natural disaster,” she says. “Every disaster has a human component.

“There are, of course, natural hazards—floods, fires and tornadoes—but what turns them into disasters is the collision between vulnerable built environments, vulnerable human systems and the natural environment. That’s what creates a disaster.”

In the case of the historic Colorado flood, Peek says several factors converged to maximize the damage. These included:

Storm stalled: Rather than moving through an area as storms tend to do, the storm that evening stalled over the canyon, dumping more than 12 inches of water in just over four hours. “It was almost like pouring water into a bowl,” Peek says.
Rapid water rise: The floodwaters rose with astonishing speed, leaving many people trapped in cabins, automobiles or low-lying areas before they understood the danger.
Geography: The canyon’s steep walls funneled water into a narrow corridor, placing people in homes, hotels, campgrounds and vehicles along the river in harm’s way. “The topography played a major role,” Peek acknowledges.
Nightfall: The storm struck after dark, when many people were sleeping. Also, of those who were awake, some could not see or sense the danger.
Cars: Many victims were in cars—either trying to flee the storm or parked near the river. “The people with the highest risk of dying were those who remained in their vehicles,” Peek says.
Timing: The storm struck during the final holiday weekend of the summer, when the canyon was crowded with campers and visiting tourists, as well as a mix of full-time and part-time residents. In total, it is estimated that about 2,500 people were in the canyon at the time.

“There’s also the human dimension—whether people understood the risk, knew what to do, could physically take action and could get to safety,” Peek says. “That complicated mix is what led to so many deaths.”

A cabin lodged on a private bridge just below Drake, Colorado, following the Big Thompson Flood in 1976. (Photo: W.R. Hansen/U.S. Geological Survey)

She adds that research conducted soon after the flood found that survival often depended upon a simple but critical decision: getting out and moving uphill.

“What the research on who survived and why—and who died and why—showed was that the key to survival was getting out … and literally climbing to safety,” she says.

She says that finding is one of the flood’s most enduring lessons.

A (new) sign of the times in 1977

Today, anyone who travels through Colorado canyons is likely familiar with the bright yellow signs depicting a person climbing uphill.

Peek says those signs endure because they communicate something essential: Survival depends upon taking immediate action.

Today, anyone who travels through Colorado canyons is likely familiar with the bright yellow signs depicting a person climbing uphill. (Photo: Brad Turner/KUNC)

“If you’re going to communicate risk effectively, the message has to be actionable,” she explains. “That’s why, even 50 years later, the signage remains so powerful. It tells people exactly what to do in the face of an imminent threat to life safety.”

Peek notes those climb-to-safety signs were the result of an August 1977 working paper by ��ñ�� researcher Eve C. Grunfest, who interviewed dozens of flood survivors, first responders, emergency management professionals and others to learn what worked and what needed to be improved following the Big Thompson Flood. Grunfest studied under Gilbert F. White, a ��ñ�� professor of geography who Peek says is widely considered the father of floodplain management and who founded the Natural Hazards Center in 1976.

The Natural Hazards Center was not established because of the Big Thompson Flood, as White was already in the process of founding the organization in 1975. However, Peek says the flood demonstrated why such an academic research center, dedicated to translating and sharing findings, was needed.

“The Natural Hazards Center was established because, at the time, a lot of research wasn’t making it into the hands of practitioners and policymakers,” says Peek, who was a graduate research assistant at the center from 1999 to 2005. She returned to ��ñ�� in 2017 to serve as the center’s director. “The Natural Hazards Center was established to nurture the hazards and disaster research community and share information with those concerned with reducing disaster risk. That’s the work that federal agencies like the National Science Foundation support us to do, because the evidence shows that actions we take before disaster can save lives and prevent unnecessary harm and suffering.”

Comparing the floods of 1976 and 2013

In many ways, Colorado today is better prepared for flooding than it was in 1976, Peek says.

At the time of the 1976 disaster, emergency managers lacked many of the tools that are the norm today. Then, there were no cellphone alerts, no modern emergency notification systems, no social media networks and few of the sophisticated weather forecasting capabilities available today.

Peek says that weather forecasting has become more precise, at-risk communities have installed warning sirens and emergency communication systems can distribute alerts through many channels and in many different languages to serve diverse groups.

In the Big Thompson Canyon, some vulnerable structures destroyed in the 1976 flood were never rebuilt in the same locations.

“Portions of the built environment have been moved out of the highest-risk floodways and floodplains,” Peek says. “Some of the streamside motels, cabins and other structures that were destroyed in the flood were not rebuilt in those same vulnerable locations.”

When the Big Thompson River flooded again in 2013, Peek says it demonstrated both the value of those improvements and the continuing reality of flooding danger. While the 2013 flood caused massive damage and resulted in at least eight deaths, Peek says she believes losses would have been even worse without decades of investment in warning systems and flood mitigation.

Why some lessons go unlearned

Despite the progress made since 1976, recent disasters show that communities do not always implement best-practice safety measures. Peek points to the 2025 Camp Mystic tragedy in Texas, where children were swept away in a flash flood.

“They didn’t have an emergency action plan. They didn’t have sirens. They didn’t have timely cell phone alerts. They hadn’t moved structures in the floodplain out of harm’s way,” Peek notes.

Why do these failures persist?

Peek offers several reasons. While disasters can create “policy windows” for lawmakers and regulators to act, those windows close more quickly today due to short public attention spans, and consensus is harder to build in today’s age of political polarization, she notes. Additionally, even when guidance exists, people may not know where to begin or may be overwhelmed, she adds.

Still, Peek sees some reasons for optimism. New guidance documents from the Association of State Floodplain Managers provide step-by-step instructions for camps and RV parks to create emergency action plans and offer model ordinance language for lawmakers.

“That’s a good example of how progress happens,” she says. “Such guidance can help spur action.”

A state that has changed—and largely forgotten the storm

Meanwhile, back in Colorado, Peek says one of the bigger challenges in commemorating the anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood is that most Colorado residents—and nearly all of its visitors—have no memory of it.

“Fifty years is a long time,” she notes. “Most visitors would have no reason to know anything about the Big Thompson Flood unless they are particularly interested in disaster history.”

The Big Thompson Flood remains the deadliest disaster in Colorado’s history. By learning what happened, how lives could have been saved then and how lives can still be saved today, we have an opportunity to build a more resilient state.”

Even among residents, Colorado today is a relatively young state demographically. Many people weren’t alive when the flood occurred, and many didn’t attend school here. As a result, public awareness of flood risk remains low, Peek says.

“People are often surprised to learn that Boulder is one of the state’s communities most at risk to flash flooding,” she says.

At the same time, Colorado itself has changed dramatically since 1976. The state’s population has swelled from 2.6 million then to more than 6 million today. More people are hiking, camping and driving through canyons than ever, oblivious to the dangers that flash floods pose. And while technology has improved, many of those areas are still without reliable cell service, Peek notes. She adds that floods can strike with little warning.

Could a disaster like the 1976 Big Thompson Flood could happen today?

Peek’s answer is an unequivocal yes. That’s why physical signage, emergency planning measures, public education and land-use planning all remain essential—especially in a warming climate, she says.

“Risk isn’t static,” she says. “As we experience more extreme rainfall events, places that once weren’t considered high risk, or weren’t mapped as flood hazards, may now be vulnerable.”

Peek says it’s also why remembering anniversaries like the 1976 Big Thompson Flood still matters today.

“It’s so important to know our history,” she says. “The Big Thompson Flood remains the deadliest disaster in Colorado’s history. By learning what happened, how lives could have been saved then and how lives can still be saved today, we have an opportunity to build a more resilient state.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about sociology? Show your support.

��ñ�� Natural Hazards Center Director Lori Peek says there are still lessons to be learned from the devastating flash flood, 50 years later.

Traditional

White

Top photo: Damage caused by the 1976 Big Thompson Flood (Photo: Maurice L. Albertson/Maurice L. Albertson Papers at Colorado State University)

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels'

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:25:49 +0000

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels' Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 15:25

Yaks graze beneath solar farm panels on the Tibetan Plateau. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Sanggay Tashi

How the development of solar and wind farms on the Tibetan Plateau is affecting local communities

China is building some of the world’s largest solar farms on the Tibetan Plateau, where nomadic people have grazed herds of animals for millennia.

It’s not the first time Tibetan regions have become a major source of renewable energy in China. Since the mid-1990s, many Tibetan communities have lived alongside hydropower stations.

Now, with vast open landscapes and high elevations that provide ideal conditions for harnessing solar and wind energy, many pastoral lands have become key sites for large-scale renewable energy projects.

Sanggay Tashi is a PhD candidate in the ��ñ�� Department of Anthropology.

As part of my ethnographic research, I spoke to number of people in this area, offering a rare look at how large-scale energy development is affecting nomadic communities.

Herding yaks on solar farms

I spent time in a nomadic community located about 100 miles (161 km) southeast of Xining city, the capital of Qinghai province.

Beginning in 2017 and accelerating more recently, regional subsidiaries of energy companies such as PowerChina have built three solar panel power plants – enough to generate about 1 gigawatt of power – and a dozen wind turbines on the area’s open grasslands.

Sandy, desert-type land is well known to be suitable for solar and wind farms. Yet the grasslands and many other pastoral areas turned into solar farms are not sandy deserts. They are productive grazing land where Tibetans have herded yaks and sheep for generations.

Parts of what was once open fine alpine grassland, which Tibetans call pangtang where herders moved freely and gazed across the boundless horizon, are now covered by dense rows of solar panels. It remains unclear how these sites comply with China’s grassland conservation regulations. Other solar projects elsewhere in China have reportedly been investigated for environmental violations.

Walking through the sites feels like moving through a dense forest of iron pillars rising into the air. “It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels,” Tsering, a local observer, told me as we walked between long rows of panels on a windy winter day in 2023.

That day, I also met Dolma, a local Dokpa, or nomad, herding yaks under solar panels. As we talked, she told me the solar farm had changed the experience of herding. She said, “I am used to herding on open grassland. So, herding under these glass panels feels like something is wrapping around my head. It feels very depressing.”

Individual and collective tensions

These energy projects in nomadic communities are presented as part of of national efforts to modernize rural areas, bring capital to local communities and promote renewable energy development as part of China’s clean energy and carbon reduction agenda.

But their implementation brings tensions and contradictions in the communities where they are located.

Tibetans walk through a solar farm in Tibet, while animals graze in the distance. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Based on my conversations with more than 20 people in the community, some view them as good economic opportunities and are envious of those whose grazing lands were selected for lease. Others oppose them, saying they “open the gate” for outsiders to appropriate local land for short-term financial gain by a few.

As more outsiders move in and the landscape changes with these energy projects, the overall concern that I observed from talking to different people is that the land that generations have lived on and protected may not retain the same sense of home in the future.

Tsering, who guided me through the solar farms, is very critical of those who agreed to lease land to solar farms, saying, “I may sound pretentious, but these days people are like grass growing on a wall – easily swayed by the slightest breeze of money.”

Since the 1950s, all land in China has been either government-owned or collectively owned; private land ownership is not allowed. Individuals may hold fixed-term “land-use rights” that can be transferred, sold or leased. In the 2000s, the government allocated land to individual families in nomadic areas of Qinghai and granted them 50-year “grassland use certificates."This enables the locals to raise livestock on the land and lease it to others. Most certificates are set to expire in 2050.

Some holders of grassland use certificates have leased their land to energy farms. In the area I studied, those leases typically are for around 25 years, to align with the remaining term of local grassland use rights. What will happen when these land use rights expire remains unknown.

Yaks graze beneath solar farm panels on the Tibetan Plateau. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Money matters

In practice, leasing is extremely complex. When I asked a dozen families about their official contracts with the energy companies, several people said they signed it without fully understanding what it said.

"The only thing people made sure to know is how much money they are receiving,” one person said to me. The documents included long and complicated legal or technical language in Chinese, some of which was orally translated into Tibetan during the signing, because many nomads who are heads of households and more than 40 years old can’t read either Chinese or Tibetan.

Negotiations and leasing decisions are often carried out between company representatives and a small number of heads of households, brought together with the help of local officials. That leaves many residents uninformed about the terms and conditions of the agreements.

Households that lease grazing land to energy projects receive a one-time payment that depends on the amount of land involved and which company is seeking the lease. From 2017 to 2026, residents have told me they received offers between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan (US$440 to $587) for each mu, a unit of area equivalent to about 0.16 acres. Those rates have resulted in payments between 40,000 and 100,0000 yuan ($7,300 to $147,000) per household.

Human relations with the land

The energy companies’ contracts treat local households and land as individually owned properties in financial transactions. But local Indigenous communities have a different understanding and relationship to the environment.

Socially and historically, and regardless of the government policies on land ownership, Tibetans have perceived pastoral land as communal and experienced it as inhabited by all kinds of beings besides humans, including deities, animals, insects and other visible and invisible beings that are important in the Tibetan cosmological worldview. The energy planners often disregard these local ways of understanding and relating to the land.

During a dinner conversation, four local residents told me about one of these deeper spiritual concerns. During the construction of transmission lines to carry the solar power to users, they said, several transmission poles were placed very close to a labtse of a neighboring community. A labtse is a sacred site where an important mountain deity is believed to reside and where community members make regular offerings.

A solar farm under construction in eastern Tibet. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

When locals asked for the poles to be moved, the energy developers suggested they would cover the cost of relocating the labtse instead – which, culturally, cannot be done, and if it were would require direction from high-ranking religious figures.

For the local people, however, this was not a matter of compensation but of protecting the deity from being stabbed by the giant poles. Some residents were even willing to pay the planners to move the poles. After a series of negotiations, the poles were eventually moved a short distance from the labtse.

Living alongside energy farms

Herding on energy farms comes with new challenges.

When the solar panels were installed, excavation for support posts and underground cables disturbed the topsoil and destroyed the native grasses, which consist of a diverse species of grass. According to people involved in the work, the replacement grasses consisted of only one or two dominant species among the several that were common in the local ecosystem. And the seeds used for restoration came from beyond the local area, so residents are unsure whether the replanted grasses are exactly the same as the types that grow locally.

During winter, snow under the shade of solar panels takes a long time to melt, causing baby lambs to freeze in the cold. Dolma also told me, “The solar panels are making a fortune for the wild fox because it is hard to see them when they attack little lambs under the panels.”

Dolma told me that when the wind turbines were being built, their noise frightened her livestock and carried across the valley, disturbing neighbors during windy times.

The locals also told me that wind blowing through the posts and wires of solar farms produces persistent and unsettling noises that disturb both animals and people.

Future uncertainties

While these solar farms are generally considered “renewable” and part of “sustainable development,” their future remains uncertain. Locals told me they do not know whether the land-lease contracts will be renewed or abandoned when they expire in about 25 years. Solar panels also last around 25 years, and local people wonder how the waste will be disposed of.

As more Indigenous communities around the world become locations for climate mitigation projects, energy production and data centers, the stories of local people are essential to understand how their ways of life, culture and environment are affected by these new interventions.

Sanggay Tashi is a PhD candidate in the ��ñ�� Department of Anthropology specializing in cultural anthropology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How the development of solar and wind farms on the Tibetan Plateau is affecting local communities.

Traditional

White

Top photo: Livestock graze near solar panels in eastern Tibet (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Where did language come from?

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:02:23 +0000

Where did language come from? Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 15:02

Karen Stollznow

Nobody really knows, but the theories are fascinating

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there?

The origins of language have fascinated philosophers, scientists and storytellers for thousands of years. Despite all our advances in linguistics, archaeology and cognitive science, we still don’t know exactly how language began.

That uncertainty hasn’t stopped people from trying to solve the mystery. In fact, some of the earliest theories of language’s origins are among the strangest and most entertaining ideas in the history of science.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the ��ñ�� Department of Linguistics.

Bow wow, ding-dong

In the 19th century, scholars proposed a flurry of curious theories to explain how speech first emerged. Many of these theories were given playful nicknames by the German philologist Max Müller, who intended them partly as satire. Yet the theories were genuine attempts to tackle one of humanity’s biggest questions.

The most famous is probably the Bow-Wow Theory. This suggested language began through imitation of natural sounds. Early humans, according to this theory, copied the noises around them: animal cries, splashing water, thunderclaps and birdsong. Words such as “buzz”, “hiss”, “bang” and “splash” seem to support the idea because they sound like what they describe.

But there is a problem. Different languages hear the same sounds differently. English dogs go “woof” or “bow-wow”, but in Turkish they go “hev-hev”, while Indonesian dogs go “guk-guk”. Even animal noises, it turns out, are filtered through culture and language.

And onomatopoeic words (words that imitate sounds) make up only a tiny fraction of our vocabularies. Most words sound nothing like their meanings. For instance, there is nothing inherently tree-like about the word “tree”.

That brings us to the Ding-Dong Theory, which argued that sounds and meanings are naturally connected in some deeper, almost mystical way.

Some words do seem to fit their meanings uncannily well. “Mini”, “teeny” and “itsy-bitsy” feel small and delicate. “Lump”, “rump” and “plump” sound heavier and rounder.

Modern linguists call this sound symbolism. One famous experiment asked participants to match two nonsense words, “bouba” and “kiki”, to two shapes: one rounded and one jagged. Most people matched “bouba” with the soft shape and “kiki” with the sharp one.

The effect is real, but it is limited. Most language still appears to be arbitrary, which means there is no natural reason why a particular sound should mean a particular thing.

German philologist Max Müller gave playful nicknames to competing theories of language’s origins. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Pooh-pooh, la-la, ye-he-ho

Other theories focused less on imitation and more on emotion and social interaction.

The Pooh-Pooh Theory proposed that speech began with instinctive emotional cries such as “ouch”, “oh” or perhaps less publishable exclamations uttered after stubbing a toe. According to this idea, language evolved from spontaneous vocal reactions to pain, surprise, fear or joy.

Again, though, there are complications. Interjections vary widely across languages. English speakers say “ouch”. Greeks say “aou”. Czechs might exclaim “ach”. Emotional sounds are not nearly as universal as they seem.

Then there is the wonderfully named Yo-He-Ho Theory, which suggested language emerged from rhythmic chants used during collective labour, like sailors chanting “yo-heave-ho” while hauling ropes, or workers singing together to coordinate physical effort.

The theory may sound quaint, but modern researchers do think rhythm, cooperation and social bonding played important roles in human evolution. Language is, after all, deeply social.

Another proposal, the La-La Theory, linked language to music. Charles Darwin entertained the possibility that speech evolved from musical calls used in courtship and emotional expression. Before humans spoke, perhaps we sang?

Some modern theories echo this idea. One hypothesis suggests that, as early humans began walking upright, parents increasingly needed to soothe babies from a distance. Sing-song vocalisations, cooing and proto “baby talk” may have helped strengthen emotional bonds and eventually paved the way for speech.

Gestures, symbols and brains

Today, most scientists think no single theory fully explains language origins. Instead, language probably emerged gradually through a combination of gestures, vocalisations, facial expressions, social cooperation and increasing cognitive complexity.

Charles Darwin speculated that speech evolved from musical expression. (Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron/Wikimedia Commons)

Some researchers argue that language began with gestures before shifting to speech. Others believe language evolved as a tool for social bonding, allowing larger groups of humans to cooperate and share information. Still others see language as tied to the evolution of symbolic thought itself: our ability to imagine, plan, remember and communicate abstract ideas.

Biology is also a factor. Humans have developed unusually precise control over the tongue, lips and vocal tract. We have evolved specialised brain regions linked to language processing.

But anatomy alone cannot explain language. Parrots can mimic speech sounds. Many animals communicate. None, however, appear to possess grammar and symbolism on the human scale. And, frustratingly, early language leaves no evidence behind. Spoken words don’t fossilise.

That lack of evidence is one reason the topic became so controversial that, in 1866, the Société de Linguistique de Paris banned discussions about language origins altogether, dismissing the field as hopelessly speculative.

Of course, theories about language origins also appear in religion and mythology. In Greek mythology, the messenger god Hermes was associated with language and communication. In the Hindu tradition, the goddess of knowledge and speech Saraswati bestowed Sanskrit upon humanity. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, language was a gift from God, who enabled Adam to name the animals in the Garden of Eden.

These stories reflect something deeply human: our urge to explain where language came from, because language itself feels almost magical. Every theory of language origins captures a small piece of the puzzle. Imitation, emotion, rhythm, music, gesture, cooperation and symbolic thought probably all played some role.

But none can provide a complete answer. The truth is that language evolved so long ago, and likely so gradually, that we will never pinpoint a single moment when it began, unless someone invents a time machine.

The birth of language will probably remain one of humanity’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Still, the theories themselves tell us something important. Humans are always trying to explain what makes us human. And language may be the most human thing of all.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the ��ñ�� Department of Linguistics specializing in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nobody really knows, but the theories are fascinating.

Traditional

White

Division of Social Sciences

��ñ�� alum directs the choir dementia can’t silence

Related Articles

How timing shapes one of the hardest conversations in medicine

Related Articles

25 years after 9/11: the persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding

Related Articles

Firefighter deaths afflict surviving colleagues, research finds

Related Articles

Remembering Dolly in her coat of many colors

Related Articles

Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later

Related Articles

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one

Related Articles

Why remembering the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 matters today

Related Articles

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels'

Related Articles

Where did language come from?

Related Articles

Division of Social Sciences

��ñ���� alum directs the choir dementia can’t silence

Related Articles

How timing shapes one of the hardest conversations in medicine

Related Articles

25 years after 9/11: the persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding

Related Articles

Firefighter deaths afflict surviving colleagues, research finds

Related Articles

Remembering Dolly in her coat of many colors

Related Articles

Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later

Related Articles

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one

Related Articles

Why remembering the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 matters today

Related Articles

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels'

Related Articles

Where did language come from?

Related Articles

��ñ�� alum directs the choir dementia can’t silence