Arts & Sciences

Drawn from more than 20 years of observations at Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, a long-term study led by primatologist Crickette Sanz in Arts & Sciences documented social ties between individual chimpanzees and gorillas that persisted over years and across different contexts.

Pioneering research at Washington University helped people understand the fundamental role of gut microbes in human health and disease. Now a community of local scientists is learning more about the diverse microbial systems that support animals, plants and ecosystems.

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians blended jazz with experimental music while staging concerts in unusual venues. In “Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM,” Paul Steinbeck, associate professor of music in Arts & Sciences, uncovers the group’s surprising rise to become international touring artists.

Maxwell Greenberg, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies in Arts & Sciences, has won a Warburg Research Grant for his work on Jewish pioneers in the American Southwest. In addition, Greenberg’s research on Jewish pioneer cemeteries will be used in Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s new project on race, religion and Judaism.

Washington University in St. Louis political scientists Christopher Lucas (right), Jacob Montgomery, and Margit Tavits won a $571,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the rise of populist rhetoric on social media and its effects on democracies.

Geo-resolution 2022, hosted by the Taylor Geospatial Institute, will bring together experts and students to use geospatial tech to predict and mitigate climate change.

People who lived in neighborhoods with ready access to civic and social organizations displayed higher cognitive scores than those who lived in neighborhoods with no immediate access to such organizations, finds a new study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and University of Michigan.

Sociocultural anthropologist Pascal Boyer, in Arts & Sciences, received a $2 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to examine historical and modern religious customs that fall outside of institutionalized religion.

Biologist Susanne S. Renner in Arts & Sciences explains why trees might actually be starting to turn red and yellow earlier, not later. Brilliant fall color might become a casualty of a warming world.

Zachary Stern’s frenetic comedy “Democratic Airlines” and Melia Van Hecke’s contemporary folktale “The Fern” will receive world premiere staged readings as part of the 2022 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival. The festival is named for alumnus A.E. Hotchner, who famously bested Tennessee Williams in a campus playwriting competition.