To understand trolls is to understand oneself—and professor Lotta Gavel Adams knows them better than most. But Gavel Adams, professor emerita and Barbro Osher Endowed Chair of Swedish Studies at the University of Washington, insists she’s neither troll scholar nor folklorist. “I am an historian of literature and culture who looks at what trolls look like [...]

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“The pursuit of happiness.” It’s a phrase that helped form our basis as a nation, but could it be that the pursuit of “happiness” is leaving us less happy than ever before? What is happiness, anyway? Those are questions Annie Nguyen explores in the writing classes she teaches as a lecturer at the University of Washington Tacoma; [...]

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Step into Steve Herbert’s office in Smith Hall at the University of Washington and it’s the art that immediately catches your eye. On a back wall above his desk hang two large pen-and-ink drawings of labyrinthine detail, imbued with a spinning sense of motion through thousands of short hatch marks made by a ballpoint pen. [...]

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For some, traveling the world conveys a sense of freedom. For Sonal Khullar, associate professor of art history at the University of Washington, however, the act of crossing borders all too often illustrates the strictures and stumbling blocks of globalism in the twenty-first century. “One of the things I’ve noted is that we usually think [...]

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For any academic, the moment of holding your first published book is one of accomplishment, elation, and total triumph. But for Alexes Harris, a professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, that moment came on the heels of learning her life hung in the balance. A year earlier, she’d been working out when she [...]

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Deep in a cavernous concrete basement, Jennifer Bean sits stooped over a Steenbeck machine. The large, flatbed editor helps her hand-control the frame-by-frame movement of a filmstrip nobody has seen in eighty years. Like all filmstrips produced before the mid-century introduction of acetate safety stock, it is made of nitrocellulose, a highly flammable material prone [...]

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It’s an instrument unlike any you’ve ever seen or heard. Tracing its origins to early 20th century Trinidad, the steel pan is constructed by hammering notes into the sunken bottom of an oil drum and played using small, rubber-tipped mallets. But the instrument’s outward simplicity belies complex origins. “For the people of Trinidad, the steel pan represents [...]

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As millions of students go back to school this September, one University of Washington professor says school leaders and other involved adults have just as much opportunity to learn once the first bell rings. “There are forms of expertise that educators don’t have,” says Dr. Ann Ishimaru, an associate professor of Educational Policy, Organizations & [...]

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Hailing from Yakima and wearing a well-loved Mariners cap, Dr. Andrew Loveless might seem like your average Washingtonian. However, the principal lecturer in the Department of Mathematics has set himself apart in a field that is notoriously difficult to teach. In his classes, Loveless utilizes a strategy of gamification that emphasizes student engagement to mitigate [...]

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As co-director of the University of Washington Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic, Brenda Williams’ work bridges two worlds. “When folks hear what I do, they’ll often think that University of Washington law students enter the Tulalip Tribal Court space and provide a service, but it’s actually the reverse,” she says. “What our students gain from [...]

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For Angélica Cházaro, great tumult comes with even greater opportunity. An assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law, Cházaro specializes in immigration and refugee law. Over the past two years, her expertise has been called on more than ever as US immigration policy dominates the national political conversation. “Teaching immigration law has [...]

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Call her a professor. Call her a Buddhist chaplain. But before anything else, call Jane Compson what she calls herself: a curator. “I’m not a psychologist; I’m not a neuroscientist; but one of the things I think I am quite good at is explaining concepts to laypeople, because I am one myself,” says Compson, an [...]

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