Berkeley Voices

Tyler Lee-Wynant grew up hearing stories about his great-great aunt, Edna Campbell Guerrero. Born in 1907 in Mendocino County, she was a native speaker of Northern Pomo, one of seven languages spoken by the Pomo people...

There’s so much incredible research and work that happens every day at UC Berkeley, on everything from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to linguistics and the study of social justice. It holds the record...

Last month, UC Berkeley researchers published a study about how they tricked the eye into seeing a new color . It was a highly saturated teal, a peacock green, the greenest of all greens.  The scientists produced...

When Ann Johnson had a rare brainstem stroke at age 30, she lost control of all of her muscles. One minute, she was playing volleyball with her friends. The next, she couldn’t move or speak.  Up until that moment...

When Winnie Wong first saw Dafen Oil Painting Village in 2006, it was nothing like she’d imagined.  The Chinese village was known for mass producing copies of Western art. She’d read about it in The New York Times...

Have you ever seen letters from the 1800s? Aside from the pristine penmanship and grammar, the way friends expressed their fondness for each other is remarkable. “Letters sent between friends are often full of the kinds...

Against her mom’s warnings, UC Berkeley political scientist Marika Landau-Wells watched Arachnaphobia as a kid. Ever since, she has been terrified of spiders. But over the years, she has learned to reason with her quick...

For UC Berkeley Professor Jack Tseng, the world of paleontology never gets old. With each new discovery, paleontologists like him learn more about the animals that walked the earth millions of years ago. "If you look at...

Like millions of other Americans, UC Berkeley Professor Poulomi Saha watched a lot of docuseries about cults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The more Saha watched, the more they felt a kind of change within themself. "I...

In a June 2024 study, UC Berkeley psychology professor Keanan Joyner and his colleagues found that by using a combination of methods tailored to the multidimensional nature of psychopathy, we could transform how we...

For the first three years of Justin Davidson's childhood in Chicago, his mom spoke only Spanish to him. Although he never spoke the language as a young child, when Davidson began to learn Spanish in middle school, it...

There are countless English varieties in the U.S. There's Boston English and California English and Texas English. There's Black English and Chicano English. There's standard academic, or white, English. They're all the...

Spanish speakers in the United States, among linguists and non-linguists, have been denigrated for the way they speak, says UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson. It’s part of the country's long history of scrutiny...

In his research, UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Saagar Asnani looks at music manuscripts from between the 12th and 14th centuries in medieval France. He says only recently have scholars begun to use a wider variety of...

Brandon Sánchez Mejia stood at a giant wall in UC Berkeley’s Worth Ryder Art Gallery and couldn’t believe his eyes. In front of him were 150 black-and-white photos of men’s bodies in all sorts of poses and from all...