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Project Descriptions
Fall 2025

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Showing 25 projects out of 75 found. On page 2 out of 2.
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Between Theory and Practice: Bernard Palissy’s Faïence

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The French Huguenot ceramicist Bernard Palissy’s is famous for his casting of living specimens (amphibians and reptiles) for his plates. He was also a prolific writer, revealing his research in salt flats and his observation of fossils in the mountains. Palissy’s Discours admirable (1580) is a dialogue between Theory and...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Simone Vouet: A French artist in early seventeenth-century Rome

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Simone Vouet was an emigré artist in Rome in the 1620s before he returned to France and became a major painter in Paris, most notably serving Anne d'Autriche, the mother of Louis III. This research project concerns the artist's production in Rome, most notably his execution...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Indian Literature after Liberalization

Rahul Parson - Professor , South and Southeast Asian Studies

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

The initiation of a liberalized economy and rise of right-wing nationalist politics has increased the precarity of vulnerable communities, minorities, women, and those seen as outsiders or immigrants. This project uses historical, archival, ethnographic, and literary critical approaches to vernacular cultures in order to make visible the new political...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Ancient Texts, Modern Tools and Technologies

Laurie Pearce - Lecturer, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Are you interested in ancient civilizations and modern technologies? Would you like to contribute to the preservation of knowledge and cultural heritage? Do you have or would you like to develop skills with databases and image preparation tools? Research apprentices associated with the URAP project Ancient Texts, Modern...

 Arts & Humanities   Digital Humanities and Data Science

The Palatine East Pottery Project

J. Theodore (Ted) Peña - Professor, Ancient Greek and Roman Studies

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project is concerned with the classification, quanitification, analysis and publication of the ca. 20 tons of ancient Roman pottery recovered in the Palatine East Excavations in downtown Rome. The material, which dates to the period ca. AD 50 – AD 450, comes from all over the Mediterranean world, and provides...

 Arts & Humanities

Istanpolis: Reconstructing Greek Communities in 19th-20th century Istanbul

Christine Philliou - Professor, History

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

This is a collaborative research and Digital Humanities project I initiated in 2020 and our team includes scholars in Greece, Turkey, and several other countries. We are reading Ottoman Turkish and Greek sources about the population of Greek Orthodox in Istanbul and creating data sets, and then visualizations and interactive...

 Arts & Humanities   Digital Humanities and Data Science   Social Sciences

Research on Precision Silicon Position Sensors for the LHC and Data Analysis and Simulation Studies for Present and Future Collider Experiments

Marjorie Shapiro - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and researchers use its data to study what the universe was like shortly after the big bang. Researchers at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) play a key role in all aspects of the ATLAS...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences   Arts & Humanities

Restoring the Earliest Sound Recordings

Marjorie Shapiro - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

LBNL researchers developed a novel method to restore early sound recordings using methods from precision optical metrology and data analysis (see: irene.lbl.gov). These methods have been applied to a number of important historical collections of early recorded sound. Over the past two years a project at the Smithsonian Institution in...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences   Arts & Humanities

Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology, Database and Archive

Kim Shelton - Professor, Classics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology is a research unit in the Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies for our excavation and research program at the Sanctuary of Zeus in Nemea, Greece. The Center archive houses a photographic and text archive that is in the process of being re...

 Social Sciences   Arts & Humanities

Petsas House: archaeological excavation and research in Mycenae, Greece

Kim Shelton - Professor, Classics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

MYCENAE, largest and wealthiest of the palatial citadels of the Late Bronze Age, has been under investigation for more almost 150 years. The site, Petsas House, is a large building complex in the largely unexplored main settlement area. The current project was initiated in 2000 and has uncovered at least...

 Social Sciences   Arts & Humanities

The Threshold of Architecture: Data Center Design at Borders

Nicole Starosielski - Professor, Film Studies

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The design of data centers carries significant implications for our understanding of sustainability, national sovereignty, and the sociopolitical nature of infrastructure, yet architectural perspectives are largely absent from contemporary scholarship. Architecture plays a crucial role in shaping social life, the environment, and concretizing borders. This project brings architecture to the...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences   Engineering, Design & Technologies   Environmental Issues

Unveiling and Communicating the Hidden Environmental Costs Internet Infrastructures

Nicole Starosielski - Professor, Film Studies

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

Over the past two years, Berkeley undergraduates have been researching the hidden environmental costs of the internet, publishing their findings in industry journals, presenting at high profile industry and academic conferences, and teaching over 125 students from 32 different majors in a DeCal called Building A Sustainable Internet. We are...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences   Engineering, Design & Technologies   Environmental Issues

Fission Impossible: Community Engagement, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors & Data Centers

Nicole Starosielski - Professor, Film Studies

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

Data centers are currently responsible for 4% of United States power usage, and that number is projected to increase to 6.7-12% in 2028. Companies in the sector are increasingly considering nuclear energy (and specifically small modular reactors) to power their data centers, but missing from these conversations (and the research...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences   Engineering, Design & Technologies   Environmental Issues

Facebook for Vikings: Social Networks and the Icelandic Sagas

Timothy Tangherlini - Professor, Scandinavian

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Icelandic Family Sagas are an intriguing window onto the social world of 10th and 11th century Iceland, seen through the authorial lens of late medieval writers. A striking characteristic of the sagas is the abundance of characters that interact in and across complex social networks as they first initiate...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences   Digital Humanities and Data Science

The Digital Berkeley Folklore Archive

Timothy Tangherlini - Professor, Scandinavian

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The Berkeley folklore archive is one of the largest, student-created folklore archives in North America. Started in the 1960s, the archive houses over 500,000 records detailing the everyday life and informal culture of thousands of students and their communities. In 2020, the archive began digitizing these records. Along with...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences   Digital Humanities and Data Science

AI Language Technologies in Language Education

Kimberly Vinall - Executive Director, Berkeley Language Center

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

AI language technologies offer new potentials and new challenges for language instruction and language learning. This project aims to explore how students actually use AI tools for language learning while writing. This project is hosted by the Berkeley Language Center (BLC), whose mission is to support research in applied language...

 Social Sciences   Arts & Humanities

Preservation of Rare Books in Republican China/Honglou meng (The Story of the Stone)

Sophie Volpp - Professor, Comparative Literature

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

I am engaged in two projects. One concerns attempts to preserve China's cultural heritage by saving rare books from capture by the Japanese army during the Sino-Japanese war. Since English-language sources are somewhat limited, reading knowledge of Chinese or Japanese is a big plus. The undergraduate students work...

 Arts & Humanities

Encouraging Deep Learning about Culture at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology: Studies of Our Visitors and Surrounding Community

Linda Waterfield - Head of Registration, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Hearst Museum of Anthropology, located in Anthropology & Art Practice Building, has educational offerings that combine the exciting work of Berkeley researchers with perspectives from community members, looking at how they relate to the cultures and objects represented in the collection. We encourage visitors to think deeply about questions of...

 Social Sciences   Arts & Humanities   Education, Cognition & Psychology

Marketing and Design Apprenticeship

Linda Waterfield - Head of Registration, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Development Department at the Hearst Museum focuses on projects that support the larger goals of the Museum: marketing, fundraising, communications, and project development. Students will be involved in researching museum membership strategies and designing digital and print marketing materials. Students will also be tasked with creating and evaluating engaging...

 Social Sciences   Arts & Humanities   Education, Cognition & Psychology

Registration Apprenticeship

Linda Waterfield - Head of Registration, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Registration division oversees and manages collection object documentation. URAP students will assist in the transformation of once hidden collections to fully accessible collections through: · Processing New Collections Acquisitions · Research and Cataloging of Existing Collections · Archives Inventory and Needs Assessment: Library and Publications · Archives Inventory and Finding Aid Creation: Research...

 Social Sciences   Arts & Humanities   Education, Cognition & Psychology

Chinese Visual Culture for the West (1700-1850)

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This is an ongoing historical research project on the visual culture produced by Chinese painters in Guangzhou, China, for European and American markets during the period of the Canton Trade (1700-1850). The project explores the intersection of art and science, art and plants, art and animals, and lesser known parts...

 Arts & Humanities

Hong Kong Art and Visual Culture

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

A collaboration with the Asian Art Museum, this project researches the art and visual culture of Hong Kong, in its history and present...

 Arts & Humanities

Translation and Local History of Guangzhou

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project centers on the daily diary of a literatus in early modern Guangzhou, China. Through reading and translating the diary, we examine the everyday life of an urbane gentleman, his navigation of an early modern city and its social networks. We see the centrality of painting, poetry, music, and...

 Arts & Humanities

Modern and Contemporary Art

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

Research on the modern and contemporary artists Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Banksy, Constantin Brancusi, Matthew Wong, Agnes Martin, and others...

 Arts & Humanities

Mapping the Musical Renaissance

Emily Zazulia - Professor, Music

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project aims to develop a new visualization tool for the study of Renaissance musical culture. Recognizing that central information about musicians and musical institutions is scattered across thousands of often hard-to-access documents and published volumes, and appreciating the potential for dynamic, easy-to-use digital visualization tools...

 Arts & Humanities

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