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It's rather fitting that world-renowned philosopher Brian Skyrms occupies an office on the seventh floor of UC Irvine's Social Science Tower. The bearded professor is on a higher plane than most mortals — pondering life's deepest questions and framing complex theories about how we interact and communicate. "The theory of knowledge shouldn't be, 'Oh, how do we define knowledge?' It should be how information flows," Skyrms says.

Six social sciences graduate students have been recognized by the UCI Graduate Division for their research excellence.  Highlighted below, their work and continued funding for it, will advance academic findings on labor unions, human rights, social movements, public policies aimed at helping the elderly, and relationships between technology and economic growth.  

Frank D.

From The Economist:
Governments in the rich world are taking the knife to the budgets, pay and pensions of state employees. But where to cut? A study by Jan Brueckner and David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, finds that within America there may be more flab in public-sector pay packets in states like coastal California than wintry Wisconsin.

For the full story, please visit http://www.economist.com/node/18285587?story_id=18285587&fsrc=rss.

The UCI Alumni Association has announced UC Irvine Distinguished Professor Brian Skyrms, logic & philosophy of science and economics, will receive the 2011 Extraordinarius award during the 41st annual Lauds & Laurels ceremony May 12 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.

Before coming to UC Irvine, Andrew Chang, economics, had had scant experience with California beyond the turnstiles at Disneyland. Years after vacationing with his parents at the Magic Kingdom, he thought of the entire state as “the happiest place on Earth.”

Gabrielle Castro believes art can be a unifying force. She experienced this in a memorable way during a trip to Ghana last summer with a UC Irvine contingent of dancers and scholars.

A senior studying dance, English and linguistics, Castro embarked on the journey to explore the role dance has played in forming Ghana’s cultural identity.

Determining who cooks and who cleans in a household may feel like a personal decision arrived at by individual couples, but UCI sociologist Judith Treas says culture and societal characteristics have a major influence on how domestic duties get divvied up in homes around the globe.  In Dividing the Domestic: Men, Women, and Household Work in Cross-National Perspective, Treas, coeditor Sonja Drobnic, and

In its review of proposed legislation by Governor Brown that would repeal California's Enterprise Zone program, the State Senate is calling on the expertise of UCI economics professor David Neumark.

A research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and Bren fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), Neumark is an expert on minimum wage and labor policy and will be a member of the five-person speaker panel.

Since it began offering Ph.D.s in 1994, UC Irvine’s Department of Anthropology has quickly become one of the country’s leading graduate programs, evidenced by 2011 National Research Council rankings which place the doctoral program among the nation’s top ten in anthropology.