At the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, we met with all of the new faculty hires in the College of Arts and Sciences. This series of podcasts introduces them and their research interests. Melissa Stein is an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies and researches scientific and cultural constructions of the body around race, gender, and sexuality.

Carl Nathe recently interviewed some of our distinguished facutly from the Department of Psychology for his UK at the Half segment, which airs during each UK football game. He spoke with Professor Greg Smith, director of clinical training and head of UK's doctoral program in Psychology about the recent productivity studies of North American universities.

Carl Nathe recently interviewed one of our own faculty members for his UK at the Half segment, which airs during each UK football game. He spoke with Ann Kingsolver, Director of the UK Appalachian Center and a professor in the Department of Anthropology, about her work in the area. Kingsolver is excited to be part of the Center and the Appalachian Studies Program and is busy exploring ways to become more involved in the community – for the university, faculty, and students.

At the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, we met with all of the new faculty hires in the College of Arts and Sciences. This series of podcasts introduces them and their research interests. Steve Davis is an assistant professor in the Department of History. Davis’s area of focus is the history of South Africa, particularly the history of the anti-apartheid struggle. He examines the uses and misuses of oral history in state narratives by comparing interviews with ex-combatants with the official narratives of the state.

Alan Brown is a Spanish professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Hispanic Studies. In this podcast, Professor Brown discusses his new position in the department, his current research, and opportunities for students to connect to the community through the Department of Hispanic Studies.

Solar energy has been around for a while now, but John Anthony, Michel Jabbour and Chi-Sing Man are part of a team that was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant to develop new ways to catch and convert light to electricity. Anthony, a chemist, describes the project, and his collaboration with mathematicians Jabbour and Man.

Abby Kerins was a poster presenter at the Lexington Farmer's Market on September 17th, 2011. Inspired by Alessandro Portelli, author of They Say in Harlan County, Kerins' research involved listening to (and reading transcripts of) oral histories from the coal-rich region of Appalachian Kentucky. Kerins focused on the role of women during coal miners' strikes in the 20th century.

At the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, we met with all of the new faculty hires in the College of Arts and Sciences. This series of podcasts introduces them and their research interests. Liang Liang is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. Liang specializes in bioclimatology and landscape phenology and is particularly interested in the variations of plant life cycles across time and space. He studies how the timing of springs, such as the greening of landscapes or flowers blooming, are simple and sensitive indicators of climate change. His current research examines how genetic factors in plants and climatic factors work together to determine the timing of phenologies on a large spatial scale.

At the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, we met with all of the new faculty hires in the College of Arts and Sciences. This series of podcasts introduces them and their research interests. Susan Odom is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. Odom, an organic and materials chemist, studies lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries to try to make them safer and increase their longevity. In her lab at UK, she synthesizes organic molecules and polymers and incorporates them into Li-ion batteries to see if they improve the batteries' performance.