Social Sciences

Rézme won the $40,000 Michael & Lori Milken Family Foundation Grand Prize at the 16th-annual Milken–Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition out of seven finalists. The venture is a compliance software that dismantles systemic barriers keeping justice-impacted individuals from jobs, housing, and higher education.

Neil Fasching and Yphtach Lelkes of the Annenberg School for Communication have found dramatic differences in how large language models classify hate speech, with especially large variations for language about certain demographic groups, raising concerns about bias and disproportionate harm.

Research from Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center have examined the potential imitative effect of firearm use in entertainment media as a factor in the rise of their use in youth homicides in the U.S.

People living on small islands and territories face mounting climate impacts, but little is known about their stance on the issue. Research from a team including Parrish Bergquist, assistant professor of political science, aims to fill those gaps.

The 2025 Library of Congress Literacy Awards recognized both Penn GSE’s Philadelphia Writing Project and a startup founded by alum Rina Madhani for their contributions to literacy and community engagement.

Graduate student Frank Chen provides insight into his project to find the best spots to plant street trees and optimize shade coverage for pedestrians in Philadelphia.

Undergraduates Kevin Li, Henry Huang, and Ethan Yang worked with linguistics professor Jianjing Kuang to compare speech production and perception by humans and AI—research that can help companies move closer to natural and expressive AI speech.

The Klein Family Presidential Associate Professor of Political Science’s article, “From Pluribus to Unum: The Civil War and Imagined Sovereignty in Nineteenth Century America,” will be the recipient of American Political Science Association’s Politics and History Section’s Mary Parker Follett prize, awarded annually for the best scholarly article in politics and history.

In a new paper, Annenberg School for Communication doctoral student Arelí Rocha explores how people discuss their relationships with AI chatbots.

Beginning Sept. 2, Wilson’s role at the McGraw Center will leverage his deep expertise to advance the Center’s mission of cultivating visionary educational leaders. The former Morehouse College President previously led the White House Initiative on HBCU