School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Students selected as Burchard Scholars are some of MIT's liveliest undergraduates. They are unafraid to wrestle with new ideas.

35 exceptional MIT students named Burchard Scholars for 2016

Sophomores and juniors who excel in the HASS and STEM fields are honored.

January 29, 2016

"Even when you have great technology, you need some incentive for people to reduce pollution. We need to find ways to make the benefit of reducing pollution felt by the ones who are paying the cost of reducing pollution." —Ariel Zucker, MIT doctoral student in economics

Incentives matter

Working with the Tata Center, two MIT economics students are testing projects to reduce industrial pollution in India.

January 29, 2016

A cleaner ballot box

In Brazil, auditing voter rolls has shrunk the electorate — to the dismay of incumbents.

January 28, 2016

A new book, “Politicized Enforcement in Argentina” (Cambridge University Press), by Matthew Amengual investigates worker safety and the global realities of labor-law enforcement. Here, a group of metal workers assist in steel production.

Reality check in the factory

MIT professor’s new book shows how labor laws actually get enforced, globally.

January 26, 2016

The SHASS Research Fund supports MIT research in the humanities, arts, or social sciences that shows promise of making an important contribution to the proposed area of activity.

Ten MIT-SHASS Research Fund recipients announced for 2016

January 25, 2016

Celebrating the "Pleasures of Poetry" at MIT

Now in its 20th season, a popular poetry series provides the MIT community with new voices and verbal harmonies — and a window into MIT's varied poetry offerings.

January 19, 2016

“It started informally as my way of giving back to the MIT community,” says MIT junior Benjamin Chan. His daily chalkboard project welcomes students, faculty, staff, and visitors to the Stata Center.

Mind, hand, heart — and chalk

A daily art project conceived by MIT student Benjamin Chan welcomes students, faculty, staff, and visitors to the Stata Center.

January 13, 2016

“I think the flexibility of having the opportunity to discover what you're interested in, to pursue these things, and to create a space for yourself where you can feel comfortable was what drove me to MIT,” Larissa Senatus says.

Larissa Senatus learns about the world by doing

Mechanical engineering major hopes to bring hands-on learning opportunities home to Haiti.

January 13, 2016

Left to right: Annabeth Gellman, Alexander Springer, and Kelsey Jamieson.

Three from MIT named inaugural Schwarzman Scholars

New award pays for one-year master's at Tsinghua University in China.

January 11, 2016

Life in the aftermath

MIT historian’s book explores life for Armenians in modern Turkey.

January 8, 2016

“I was always very interested in current events and fascinated by what was happening in the world around me,” MIT historian Tanalís Padilla says. “My parents were very political. I considered myself quite a political being. … I think [living in] Mexico and the United States and seeing the contrast to be so great, especially in rural Mexico, made me aware [of politics] early on.”

Past and present

MIT’s Tanalís Padilla brings alive the history of political struggles in Mexico.

January 4, 2016

MIT grad student Leah Rosenzweig coordinating data collection in Jigawa, Nigeria

New insights on political participation in Sub-Sahara Africa

PhD student Leah Rosenzweig's electoral insights shed light on reasons for citizen participation in authoritarian and transitional countries in Sub-Sahara Africa.

December 21, 2015

People building their own devices for transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have often invested substantial time looking at academic research on the subject. “They do look to scientific papers and in a lot of ways they do follow scientific precedent,” PhD student Anna Wexler says. “In other ways, they do their own thing.”

Stimulus plan?

Interest is growing in brain stimulation devices — and regulating them may prove tricky.

December 18, 2015

Yiqing Xu, MIT PhD candidate in political science

Building analytical tools to improve understanding of China's political economy

PhD student Yiqing Xu applies new methodology for better insight into the Chinese political economy.

December 15, 2015

MIT-Japan activities over IAP