Academy Award winner Geena Davis, documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney, and UC Irvine associate professor of anthropology and film & media studies Roxanne Varzi will mark the Southern California debut of “Women, War & Peace” with a panel discussion and preview Thursday, Oct. 13, of the bold, five-part PBS television series challenging the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain.
Michael McBride, economics associate professor, has received $489,000 in grant funding to outfit his newly launched Experimental Social Sciences Laboratory with state-of-the-art computer equipment and for initial experimental behavioral studies. 
Global peace is more than an abstract concept to Elizabeth O’Malley ’78. Since graduating from UC Irvine with an anthropology degree, she has been fascinated by issues of cultural diversity, social change and how people of different backgrounds can work and thrive together.
Robert Garfias, anthropology professor and world renowned ethnomusicologist, is being recognized for his lifelong contributions to the study of musicians and their musical traditions.
As the trial of Amanda Knox unfolded, cameras inside the Italian courtroom captured what was, for many Americans, their first look at proceedings in a foreign court. Though the countries’ legal systems differ in some respects, there are also important similarities – like due process in criminal trials, says UCI political science professor Wayne Sandholtz.
Sociology professor Francesca Polletta is working on a new study aimed at highlighting the assumptions that are often hidden in competing positions on controversial political issues. Working with a team of computational linguists at Cornell University, she has developed a software program that graphically represents the linguistic patterns underpinning writers’ positions on controversial issues in blog posts, position papers, and newspaper editorials.
UC Irvine’s 
Wilfred Wan, political science graduate student, is the recipient of a 2011-2012 Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellowship, awarded by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He is spending the academic year in Cambridge, Massachusetts working with the Belfer Center’s International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom pursuing research on the evolution of nuclear weapons proliferation. 
