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Latin American and Latino Studies celebrates 30 years of growth, plans for the future
Balloons spelling out LALS 30

More than 100 people gathered for dinner and salsa dancing to mark the program's anniversary. (Photo: Gwyneth K. Shaw)

Latin American and Latino Studies celebrates 30 years of growth, plans for the future

What began as a handful of faculty and students has matured into a program offering a major and minor, grants, and a local and international community hub.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

Night at the (Penn) Museum
Kids with statue and flashlights

The flashlight expedition included a trip through the Egypt gallery, with artifacts like this statue of Ramses II. 

Night at the (Penn) Museum

What it’s like to sleep over with mummies and more than 10,000 years’ worth of artifacts.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

Four Penn faculty receive Guggenheim fellowships
Jed Esty, Carmen Maria Machado, Adriana Petryna, and Michelle Lopez

Four Penn faculty were named 2019 Guggenheim Fellows. Clockwise from left: Jed Esty for literary criticism, Carmen Maria Machado for fiction, Adriana Petryna for anthropology and cultural studies, and Michelle Lopez for fine arts. 

Four Penn faculty receive Guggenheim fellowships

Louisa Shepard

Declassified images from U2 spy planes reveal bygone Middle Eastern archaeological features
Satellite images of a desert in Jordan in the Middle East.

Desert kites, stone wall structures that date back 5,000 to 8,000 years like those shown above, were used to trap gazelle and other similar animals. The dry desert of eastern Jordan preserved many of them, but agricultural expansion in western Jordan dismantled or destroyed many more.

Declassified images from U2 spy planes reveal bygone Middle Eastern archaeological features

Researchers from Penn and Harvard are the first to make archaeological use of U2 spy plane imagery, and have created a tool that allows other researchers to identify and access the Cold War-era photos.

Michele W. Berger

Genetic research has a white bias, and it may be hurting everyone’s health

Genetic research has a white bias, and it may be hurting everyone’s health

PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff and Giorgio Sirugo of the Perelman School of Medicine collaborated on a paper that concluded that predominately European genetic databases may lead to difficulties treating people from other racial backgrounds. “If we don’t include ethnically diverse populations, we are potentially going to be exacerbating health inequalities,” said Tishkoff.

Making a movement from #MeToo
Panelists at the "Grassroots Organizing in the MeToo Era" at Perry World House

Joanne N. Smith, Veronica Avila, Nadeen Spence, Veronica Gago, and Penn professor Deborah A. Thomas spoke to a packed room at Perry World House. 

Making a movement from #MeToo

At Perry World House Monday, activists from around the world talked about how they’re working to make sure the stories of women and girls are told—and heard.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

A tour of the ancient world—in Mandarin
Susan Radov leads a tour of the China Gallery with sculptures in the background Susan Radov, an undergraduate cultural anthropology student, leads a tour of the China Gallery at Penn Museum.

A tour of the ancient world—in Mandarin

The Penn Museum offers tours of its exhibits in Mandarin, increasing cross-cultural access to its invaluable assemblage of objects on display, the only known museum in Philadelphia with regularly scheduled tours in the language.
A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers
A few people stand in front of a building talking to a larger group of gathered people listening.

With the help of a local translator, Simon Thompson (in blue plaid shirt) from Sarah Tishkoff’s lab and Dawit Wolde-Meskel (in yellow shirt), a collaborator from Addis Ababa University, explain the research project on African population genetics to the Argobba population, Ethiopia. After the project is presented, the researchers answer any questions. (Credit: Tishkoff lab)

A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers

PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff, Laura Scheinfeldt, and Sameer Soi use data from 50 populations to study African genetic diversity. Their analysis suggests that geographically far-flung hunter-gatherer groups share a common ancestry.

Katherine Unger Baillie

The diversity of rural African populations extends to their microbiomes
A group of people, some holding sacks, next to a small rustic house and under trees

Hadza people gather to receive a government-provided food supply of beans and maize. (Photo: Alessia Ranciaro/Tishkoff Lab)

The diversity of rural African populations extends to their microbiomes

In the largest study of its kind, researchers led by PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff, Matthew Hansen, and Meagan Rubel investigated the gut microbiomes of people from Botswana and Tanzania, and illuminate the impact of lifestyle, geography, and genetics in shaping the microbiome.

Katherine Unger Baillie

The surprising reason why some Latin Americans have light skin

The surprising reason why some Latin Americans have light skin

The Perelman School of Medicine’s Sarah Tishkoff offered commentary on a recent study on skin pigmentation in Latin American people. Previous research on pigmentation “has been done on Europeans, where ironically we don’t see a lot of variation,” she said. “One of the last frontiers has been, ‘What about East Asians and Native Americans?’”