Research & Ideas

Discover Harvard research, scholarship, and ideas shaping the world—from science and technology to policy, education, and the humanities.

Woman in a navy dress smiling while standing on a walkway with a blurred background.

Öberg to Lead Harvard Faculty Recruitment and Retention

The astrochemist will become senior vice provost for faculty affairs this summer.

by Jonathan Shaw

Illustration of book like a sinking ship, emblematic of problems in the humanities

Humanists All

What is lost in the precipitous decline of the arts and humanities

by James Engell

A woman speaking at a podium, with an image of a high-power rifle projected beside her

An Exchange of Violence

On the “exit wounds” of America’s gun industry in Mexico

by Lydialyle Gibson

liriodendron tulipifera of Eastern North America and liriodendron chinense of Eastern Asia

The Power of Plants

Exploring the “plant humanities” at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks

by Jonathan Shaw

George Reisner, 1924

George Reisner

Brief life of a pioneering Egyptologist: 1867-1942

by Peter Der Manuelian

The Off-Kilter Economy

Reckoning with inflation and its remedies

by Jonathan Shaw

Evan Osnos

America’s Riven Politics

 A Harvard Magazine Q & A with Evan Osnos ’98, author of Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury

Photograph of the 2022 Frederick Douglass Fellows together with Nettie Washington Douglass and James Pellow.

Following Frederick Douglass

During a summer fellowship, student-activists learn from the abolitionist’s legacy.

by Isabel Mehta

Photograph of Milman Parry in Paris, circa 1925-1928

Milman Parry

Brief life of a Homeric scholar with a big idea: 1902-1935

by Robert Kanigel

“A Moral Obligation”

Charles Berlin and 60 years of collecting for Harvard Library

by Lydialyle Gibson

Photograph of Richard Evans Schultes at Chiribiquete conservation area

Richard Evans Schultes

Brief life of a pioneering ethnobotanist and conservationist: 1915-2001

by Mark J. Plotkin