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‘India front and center’
Man walks up stairs. Posters in Hindi hang on the walls.

Thachil visits a municipal office in India to collect data on annual city budgets. (Image: Adam Auerbach)

  • Q&A

    • ‘India front and center’

    Tariq Thachil talks with Penn Today about his current work on migration and urbanization in south Asia, the balance between research and teaching, and his new role as the director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). 

    Kristina García

    COVID, politics, and voting by mail
    Two U.S. postal service mail boxes sit side by side on a sidewalk with trees behind them and a the first few floors of a red brick building on the left in the background

    Voting by mail has become a hot topic this election cycle, and a team of researchers at Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES) looked at how partisanship is affecting perceptions of it.

  • Q&A

    • COVID, politics, and voting by mail

    New research conducted by the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES) looks at how much support for vote by mail was impacted by the pandemic and efforts by partisan elites to politicize the discussion.

    Kristen de Groot

    An expert take on the Israel-UAE accord
    Two flags of Israel flying alongside one flag of the United Arab Emirates.
  • Q&A

    • An expert take on the Israel-UAE accord

    Ian Lustick, political science professor who specializes in Middle East politics, gives his take on the significance of the U.S.-brokered agreement and what it could mean for the region.

    Kristen de Groot

    Southeast Asian megadrought dating back 5,000 years discovered in Laos cave
    A group of archaeologists and excavators standing and sitting at the entrance of a cave.

    Penn archaeologist Joyce White (center) has been working in Laos since 2001 with teams like the one shown here. Discovering evidence of a 1,000-year drought in a Laos cave was unexpected, she says, but does answer some questions about the Middle Holocene, a period she’d previously described as the “missing millennia.” (Pre-pandemic image: Courtesy of Joyce White)

  • Q&A

    • Southeast Asian megadrought dating back 5,000 years discovered in Laos cave

    In a Q&A, Penn archaeologist Joyce White discusses the partnership with paleoclimatologists that led to the finding, plus possible implications of such a dramatic climate change for societies at that time.

    Michele W. Berger

    Cancel culture on the silver screen
    Professor in front of a bookshelf filled with books

    Meta Mazaj is a senior lecturer in cinema studies at Penn. (Image: Taja Mazaj)

  • Q&A

    • Cancel culture on the silver screen

    Iconic films like the 1939 blockbuster “Gone With the Wind” are being scrutinized in light of the Black Lives Matter movement against racial injustice. Cinema studies’ Meta Mazaj says framing films within context is more valuable than erasure and disclaimers.
    Brazil’s coronavirus crisis
    People wearing face masks chat on the street in Olinda, Brazil

    From Operação contra novo Coronavírus, Olinda, Brazil, May 20, 2020. (Image: Alice Mafra)

  • Q&A

    • Brazil’s coronavirus crisis

    Brazil has become one of the world’s deadliest hotspots for the novel coronavirus, second only to the United States in deaths and infections. Melissa Teixeira, a historian of modern Brazil, shares her thoughts on the nation’s response and challenges it faces in battling the virus.

    Kristen de Groot