Social Sciences (Faculty & Staff)

UC Berkeley History Professor Susanna Elm has long been thinking about how to understand the later Roman empire. Her research explores pressing themes that range from the rise of autocratic systems to the economy of slavery. She also examines displays of masculinity in the late Roman Empire and the ways ancient medical practices inform contemporary hospital design, among a broad range of other subjects.

Beyond her individual research, Elm has also been working with her late antique colleagues across UC campuses to reframe the Eurocentric nature...

Nine years ago, when Long Le-Khac was a newly minted Ph.D., he hit a research roadbump. He’d planned to use data analytics to map the various settings featured in Asian American literature, testing a hypothesis that this fictive geography had become increasingly international. But first, the computer would need answers from him: Of all the literary works in the world, which ones should it include as “Asian American” in its analysis?

That roadbump forced Le-Khac, now an assistant professor...

The country’s two biggest states are locked in a political contest that reflects the uncompromising polarization of our time: Texas and other Republican strongholds are redrawing congressional district maps to win more seats in the 2026 election, and California is now considering a similar move, hoping to offset Texas by sending more Democrats to Washington, D.C.

It’s an arcane fight, using the peculiar processes of gerrymandering to press for maximum political power. But the stakes are incredibly high, says UC Berkeley political scientist Eric Schickler. While a ballot...

History Professor Trevor Jackson authored a book review for The New York Review.

What happened to the future? When did we lose it, and what has taken its place? Political scientists have found a continual decline in visions of a shared transformative future since the early 1980s. Around the world, in party manifestos, inaugural speeches, and programmatic policy documents, principled statements about an open-ended future have given way to numerical targets like GDP growth achieved, emissions reduced, or people deported. The political right has been more...