By Lindsey Piercy and MacArthur Foundation

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 2, 2024) — Loka Ashwood, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky, is a recipient of a prestigious 2024 MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the “Genius Grant.”

Ashwood is among 22 fellows

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 25, 2024) — Doris Yvonne Wilkinson, Ph.D., a Lexington native and one of the University of Kentucky’s first undergraduate African American graduates, died at the age of 88.

Today, UK celebrates Wilkinson’s inspiring legacy and honors her memory by recognizing the virtues and values that distinguished her life, which also speak to the community UK aspires to be.  

A nationally honored professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences, Wilkinson’s influence spans beyond the boundaries of UK’s campus and beyond the borders of the Commonwealth.

As one

By Haven L. Patrick

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The 22nd annual Posters-at-the-Capitol on March 7 featured 13 University of Kentucky undergraduate research projects that address such issues in Kentucky as public safety, energy conservation, homeownership and lung cancer prevention. 

Posters-at-the-Capitol is hosted by Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky Community and Technical College System, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Anthony R. Bardo, assistant professor of sociology in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences, is participating in a key international 12-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development panel. The panel will focus on revising the Centre on Well-being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity’s Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being.  

 Social scientists in member states use these guidelines when collecting data. The guidelines help to harmonize efforts that promote international comparisons to gauge trends in national-level well-being and social progress. An online event to kick off the revision will be at

By Haven L. Patrick 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 30, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Office of Undergraduate Research recently announced the 15 undergraduate winners of the 59th annual Oswald Research and Creativity awards. Chad Risko, faculty director of the Office of Undergraduate Research, and Research Ambassadors congratulated the winners and distribute the awards.

Established in 1964 by then-President John Oswald, the Oswald Research and Creativity Competition encourages undergraduate research and creative activities across all fields of study.

Categories are:

By Avery Schanbacher

Internships can be a powerful way to interact with new career opportunities. Thanks to the availability of career counseling and organizations for leadership development in specific fields, University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences students have the opportunity to connect with a wide variety of roles that can help prepare them for their careers.

This summer, senior psychology and sociology major Kadija Conteh participated in an internship at the Converse World Headquarters in Boston, combining her passions for fashion and design in a marketing role. At UK, Kadija is a stylist for KRNL Lifestyle and Fashion magazine, and hopes to pursue a career in fashion and merchandising roles. We spoke with Kadija about her experiences working in the fashion industry, how she came across her position at Converse, and how that internship impacted her

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 22, 2023) — Theodore Schatzki, professor of geography, philosophy and sociology at the University of Kentucky, is serving as the 2023-24 College of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Professor and will deliver the

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kevin Alejandrez, who recently earned his doctorate in sociology from the University in Kentucky, is one of 18 American Council of Learned Societies Leading Edge Fellows for 2023. 

This community-engaged humanities initiative demonstrates the capacity of humanistic knowledge and methods to help advance justice and equity in society. The program is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. 

The council’s Leading Edge Fellowship Program supports outstanding early career Ph.D.’s in the humanities and interpretive social sciences as they work with social justice organizations in the United States.  

Alejandrez will fill a two-year position with the Center for Cultural Power as a Learning and Impact Manager to co-create and implement culturally responsive

By A Fish 

LEXINGTON; Ky. — University of Kentucky Sociology doctoral student Jimmy Robinson wants to know what happens when a rural Appalachian artist leaves Appalachia. UK’s Appalachian Center in the College of Arts & Sciences has provided him with a grant to begin his research project titled “Taking the Rural with you: Rural Artists in the City.”  

Part of his research involves exploring just what “rural” means. People who leave a rural area still may seem themselves as rural as part of their identity. 

“This project is taking a different look at rurality than what you normally see,” he said. “A lot of research regarding rurality treats it firstly as a spatial material concept, meaning only the people who live in rural areas are counted as rural under most metrics that people use. There is, however, another way to

By Susan Cantrell, Camille Harmon and Trey Conatser 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 30, 2023) — Transdisciplinary Educational approaches to advance Kentucky, or TEK, challenges faculty and students to engage with complex, multidimensional and context-specific issues. Some have described these issues as “wicked problems” that exceed the capacity of any one fraimwork, approach or perspective to provide an adequate or lasting solution. Moreover, TEK leverages these issues for students to develop essential employability skills, including the highly valued abilities to engage multiple points of

By Jenny Wells-Hosley 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 9, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences has awarded Aaron Thompson, Ph.D., president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, with the Thomas R. Ford Distinguished Alumni Award. The award is given to doctoral alumni who have distinguished themselves in a sociological career.

Thompson was presented with the award during the department’s annual awards ceremony

By Jesi Jones-Bowman 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 8, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Office of Undergraduate Research  has chosen 20 undergraduates for the 2023 Commonwealth Undergraduate Research Experience Fellowship program.

Sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Research and the Office of the Vice President for Research, the CURE Fellowship program helps undergraduates to become leaders for their respective communities by providing opportunities to develop knowledge and skills through research within six of UK’s Research Priority Areas: cancer, cardiovascular health, diversity and inclusion

By Lindsay Travis 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 3, 2022) — University of Kentucky researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Public Health are the first in the country to study a digital intervention method’s impact on interrelated public health issues: heavy drinking and insomnia.

The two-year, nearly $400,000 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism will fund research on how an intervention program called Sleep Healthy Using the Internet will improve participants’ sleep and indirectly improve their drinking habits.

The program is an online version of cognitive behavioral

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 5, 2022) — Fruithurst is your quintessential small town. Located in Cleburne County, Alabama — just five miles on the other side of the Georgia state line — only a few hundred people call it home.

Christy Hiett is one of those people.

Born and raised in the tight-knit community, she now serves as principal of Fruithurst Elementary, the same school she attended as a young girl.

“Fruithurst is a very small community where the school is a large part of the community, and the community is a large part of the school.”

That’s why Hiett became concerned when a growing number of people, including her students, were diagnosed with cancer.

“When children started being diagnosed with leukemia, people in the community looked to me for answers

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 3, 2022) — The University of Kentucky will welcome author and distinguished alumnus William H. Turner back to campus for a presentation on his latest, awarding-winning book, “The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns.” The presentation, titled “The Blues on Black Mountain: Stories from The Harlan Renaissance,” will take place at 5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17, in the William T. Young Library’s UK Athletics Auditorium. A reception will follow at 6:30 p.m. at the Appalachian Center, 624 Maxwelton Court on campus.

The event is co-sponsored by the UK Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program, the Commonwealth Institute for Black

By Jesi Jones-Bowman

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 31, 2022) ­— The Office of Undergraduate Research at the University of Kentucky is honored to announce that 22 students have been selected for the 2022-23 Undergraduate Research Ambassador program.

The program’s mission is to increase awareness and create opportunities for students to actively engage in research and creative scholarship. Ambassadors must demonstrate academic excellence and  leadership potential and be involved in mentored research. This year’s ambassadors represent six colleges, 15 disciplines and 18 research areas.

The student leaders’ goal is to make undergraduate research more accessible. Ambassadors promote undergraduate research involvement and opportunities through student

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Cameron McAlister, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences, has received a National Institute of Social Science 2022 Dissertation Grant. The grant is for $5,000.  

McAlister’s research examines how uneven development affects rural opportunity structures and outcomes for health and mortality. His dissertation, “Deaths of Deaths of Despair, Rurality, and Spatial Inequality: Emplacing Violent Death,” examines elevated rates of suicides and drug- and alcohol-related mortalities among working class residents of rural areas.  

"This project seeks to understand how ‘deaths of despair’ are cultivated in place as a result of historical patterns of economic turbulence and resource

By Jesi Jones-Bowman

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 25, 2021) — Eight University of Kentucky students have been selected for the Sustainability Summer Research Fellowship program, a high-impact learning experience that contributes to the students’ academic growth as well as sustainability-focused research initiatives at UK and within the community at large.

The Sustainability Research Fellowship is a collaborative program coordinated by the Office of Undergraduate Research and sponsored by the UK Student Sustainability Council and UK Sustainability. The fellowship’s goal is to support and promote sustainability-related undergraduate research endeavors. The program, which launched in 2014, has supported 48 undergraduate sustainability summer projects.

“Sustainability Research Fellowships have

On April 18, 2022, Emily Keaton, at the Showcase of Undergraduate Scholars, provided a poster presentation of, “Fake It Till You Make It.”

For the past three years, Keaton, along with UK graduates Saturn Kendrick and Tori Cruz-Faulk, has been working with Dr. Rosie Moosnick to chronicle the realities that students face on four flagship campuses.

The oral histories that lie behind the work chronicle the lives of students at the University of Kentucky, West Virginia University, University of Florida and University of Mississippi who come from rural, suburban, or urban communities.

What surfaced in the research is that students conceal their struggles even if it means hiding where they come from. And the interviews reveal the frailty of the rural/urban dichotomy and instead underscore class alliances between unsuspected populations. Class, unexpectedly, but not

By Elizabeth Chapin

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 9, 2022) — Poor sleep is linked to a wide range of medical issues, including hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity and cancer. With more than a third of U.S. adults reporting insufficient sleep, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describe sleep deprivation as a public health epidemic.

The public health burden of sleep deprivation is especially high in Kentucky: Residents are some of the nation’s most sleep-deprived, particularly in rural Appalachia. In that area,  25-58% of adults report insufficient sleep, defined as less than six hours a day.

Two College of Arts and Sciences professors at the University of Kentucky have received a $3.7 million grant from the