School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Effort to support postsecondary education in prison will be housed at MIT

A multi-university consortium will look to transform the lives of incarcerated people through education.

September 6, 2018

J-PAL North America will partner with the Sacramento-based California Franchise Tax Board to evaluate the impact of strategies to encourage households to file for the California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC).

J-PAL North America announces new partnerships with three state and local governments

New partners will work with J-PAL and its academic researcher network to develop randomized evaluations of programs and policies.

September 6, 2018

Luisa Kenausis spoke at the Minds Not Missiles conference held at MIT on April 7, about the importance of educating students on nuclear weapons. The event was organized by Massachusetts Peace Action.

Q&A: Luisa Kenausis ’17 — A passion for policy

Alumna builds on her foundation in nuclear policy through a Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship.

August 30, 2018

Left to right: Paloma Gonzalez, Associate Professor Takehiko Nagakura, Chang Liu, and Wenzhe Peng pose with a panoramic view of Machu Picchu in Peru. They are part of an MIT team that has worked to digitally document the site.

MIT team digitizes historic sanctuary of Machu Picchu

What if we could immerse ourselves in this UNESCO World Heritage Site through virtual reality or use augmented reality to interact with its 3-D site map?

August 28, 2018

The MIT-SenseTime Alliance on Artificial Intelligence, a program within the MIT Quest for Intelligence, has announced funding for 27 projects involving about 50 principal investigators from departments and labs within engineering, science, architecture and planning, management, and the humanities and social sciences.

MIT-SenseTime Alliance funds projects from all five schools

Interdisciplinary work will advance research in human and machine intelligence.

August 24, 2018

3 Questions: Sasha Costanza-Chock on new “#MoreThanCode” report

Study of 188 practitioners distills key recommendations about using technology to advance social justice and the public interest.

August 23, 2018

J-PAL teaching assistants and program participants discuss how to design randomized evaluations in real-world settings.

Learning to evaluate social programs

Flagship J-PAL course teaches policy leaders how, why, and when to evaluate social programs ranging from antiviolence interventions to housing mobility initiatives.

August 16, 2018

Catherine Clark and the cover of "Paris and the Cliché of History"

What Paris shows us about the history of photography

MIT professor’s book develops a new narrative about photography and the ways we use it, from the place where it all began.

August 16, 2018

This MEDSL map shows where each state’s overall score on the Elections Performance Index falls for the 2016 election.

Elections management in the U.S. is improving

An updated Elections Performance Index from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab evaluates the 2016 election.

August 15, 2018

The MITx MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy is an online series of courses designed for learners like Alan Al Yussef, who seek to have a direct impact on major social issues through an empirical, data-driven approach.

Turning an economics education into solutions with impact

MITx MicroMasters learner Alan Al Yussef is working to improve lives in the Middle East through a career in development economics.

August 14, 2018

Economics PhD student Ryan Hill, shown with daughter Norah, studies the role of risk in science. “There are a lot of projects that fail,” he notes. “And that’s a fundamental part of innovation.”

Risk, failure, and living your life: The economics of being an early-career scientist

Doctoral student Ryan Hill studies factors that influence researchers’ professional paths, while lending his voice to support student families.

August 9, 2018

"Rising inequality is highly correlated to unequal access to education," Piketty said in an address at MIT. "In the United States, 95 percent of those with parents at the highest income levels attend college, while only about 20 percent of the poorest do, research shows."

At MIT, Thomas Piketty calls for policies and collaborations to reduce income inequality

French economist was a keynote speaker at the 2018 World Economic History Congress.

August 9, 2018

The Schloss from the castle garden on the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg campus

New partnership between MIT-Germany and the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg

MIT-Germany expands student internship and Global Teaching Labs opportunities, and establishes the MIT-FAU Seed Fund for faculty.

August 7, 2018

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga and his book, "The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production" (MIT Press)

How Africans developed scientific knowledge of the deadly tsetse fly

New book by MIT Associate Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga explores science in action in Africa.

August 2, 2018

MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science Dina Katabi (far left) gives a tour of her lab to A.R. Rahman (center) and Anantha Chandrakasan (right), dean of the School of Engineering.

Music as a gateway to shared humanity

Iconic composer A. R. Rahman visits MIT campus to learn more about new technologies.