Faculty

Insights into groundbreaking faculty research, innovative projects, and academic thought leadership across Harvard’s schools and institutes.

Michèle Duguay, lecturer in music at Harvard University

Five Questions with Michèle Duguay

A Harvard scholar of music theory on how streaming services have changed the experience of music

by Olivia Farrar

This map shows soil types for all of Africa. A researcher might use it with other map layers to study agricultural productivity among countries with similar soils, comparing, for example, the agrarian practices of Francophone and Anglophone countries.

Mapping Africa

Africa Map, a project of Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis, brings GIS capabilities to research on the entire continent.

Decisionmaking, Measured

A new interdisciplinary decision-science lab will host experiments from psychology, economics, and beyond.

Theresa Betancourt with children in Sierra Leone

Helping Those Most in Need

With support from the Center on the Developing Child, Harvard scholars aim to help some of the most vulnerable groups of children.

Who Was Lincoln, Really?

Honoring the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth, Lincoln scholars attempt to cut through myth and legend to reveal the real man.

Obama's Daunting International Agenda

Journalist David E. Sanger's new book outlines the huge international security challenges facing the new administration.

Ralph Mitchell

Rx for the Books

McKay professor of applied biology Ralph Mitchell and postdoctoral fellow Nick Konkol work with preservation librarians to develop a test that can detect damaging mold in books before it becomes visible.

by Paul Gleason

Retirement Engine Rebuilt

Skeptical of both defined-benefit and defined-contribution retirement plans, Harvard Business School professor Robert Merton proposes a hybrid, SmartNest, to overcome the shortcomings of each.

by Paul Gleason

This image shows small brown-fat cells—which burn energy as heat—interspersed among larger white-fat cells, which store energy. The former are stained brown here; their natural color, which results from the density of mitochondria, would not be visible in this thin cross-section of tissue. (The blue staining marks cell nuclei.)

The Fit Fat

Harvard Medical School’s Bruce Spiegelman studies brown fat, a little-known type of tissue with health-promoting potential.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Does Thinking Make It So?

In The Cure Within, historian of science Anne Harrington explores the medical history of the mind-body connection.

by Erin O’Donnell

Habeas Corpus and the War on Terrorism

In the fight against terrorists, habeas corpus has played a key role in efforts to balance civil liberties against national security.

by Jonathan Shaw