Faculty

Whale whisperer. Time traveler. Robot wrangler.

For Gašper Beguš, associate professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, it’s all in a day’s work.

Beguš’ love of languages started early. In elementary school in Slovenia, his education included learning the language of his home country, of course. But it also offered a hearty helping of linguistics, the scientific study of words, their meanings, and their past lives. He remembers coming across an etymological dictionary as a teenager, enraptured by the hidden world revealed between its covers.

“By the time I was in high...

This article from The New Yorker features Saru Jayaraman, founder of the UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center; Michael Reich, an economics professor and David Card, an economics professor and Nobel laureate.

Hearings before the Commerce Committee of the Arizona House of Representatives normally draw a modest crowd of lobbyists in suits. On March 19, 2024, a throng of people in more casual attire appeared. They wore matching green T-shirts adorned with the message “Save Our Tips.” The slogan caught the eye of Analise Ortiz, a Democrat on the committee. She assumed that the...

Christine Philliou is currently the Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and is a Professor in the Department of History. Professor Philliou specializes in the region of the Balkans and the Middle East, specifically focused on the emergence of the Greek and Turkish nation-states. She has published Biography of Empire...

“Dick Tracy” got an atom-powered, two-way wrist radio in 1946. Marty Cooper never forgot it.

The Chicago boy became a star engineer who ran Motorola’s research and development arm when the hometown telecommunications titan was locked in a 1970s corporate battle to invent the portable phone. Cooper rejected AT&T’s wager on the car phone, betting that America wanted to feel like Dick Tracy, armed with “a device that was an extension of you, that made you reachable everywhere.”

Fifty-two years ago, Cooper declared victory in a call from a Manhattan sidewalk to the head of AT...