Research

Two faculty from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) have recently received awards for their digital projects. Jessica Otis has been awarded the Renaissance Society of America’s Digital Innovation Award for 2026 for her project, Death by Numbers, and Stephen Robertson won the Angel David Nieves Book Award from the American Studies Association and received an honorable mention for the Mary L. Dudziak Digital Legal History Prize from the American Society for Legal History for his project, Harlem in Disorder.

The American Council on Education (ACE) Virginia Network will be holding their 2026 Annual Conference on June 5 at Fuse at Mason Square in Arlington, Virginia. This year’s conference, “Navigating Rough Waters,” will explore how leaders at all stages of their academic and administrative careers chart their way through complexity with clarity, compassion, and strength. Registration is required.

Hosted by Institute for Immigration Research, a CHSS Chartered Research Center, the symposium focuses on immigration, displacement, and belonging, with a particular emphasis on how arts, culture, and storytelling can be effectively used to build community, shift public attitudes, and inform immigration-related policy in the United States. The symposium is free and open to the public. Please register.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences would like to congratulate Tamara Harvey and Jacqueline M. Burek from the Department of English for being selected for the 2026 National Humanities Center four-week summer residency program this June at the National Humanities Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Psychology doctoral student Caroline Toth looks at how adolescents’ social media use is associated with the structure of their in-person friendship networks.

In the fall 2025 semester, the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies hosted a vibrant lineup of academic, cultural, and community-focused events that brought together scholars, students, and the wider public.

Rania Zaied, a fourth-year PhD student in George Mason University’s Department of Communication, has won first-place at the annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, an engaging event that showcases the innovative research of doctoral candidates.

Hosted by Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and executive director of the consortium, this podcast focuses on how health professionals, policy makers, advocates, communicators, and activists are working to tackle the different sides of the greatest health crisis facing us today—climate change.

The National Humanities Alliance, in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies, and with funding from the National Science Foundation, is conducting a landscape survey of humanities-STEM research collaborations that address ecological challenges. CHSS faculty are encouraged to take a moment to complete this survey, which is estimated to take about 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

The Folger Institute in Washington, D.C., will offer several programs in spring 2026, including Early Modern Numeracy, directed by George Mason professor Jessica Otis. The application deadline for the spring 2026 programs is October 20.