Organized through the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarships, the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) has introduced countless students to cutting-edge research across all disciplines on Berkeley’s campus. URAP matches undergraduates with faculty members who train them in the skills needed to collaborate on their projects. Faculty and researchers across arts and humanities disciplines have participated in URAP since its founding and continue to mentor students as they become new members of our vibrant research community.
Todd Hickey, director of the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, the largest collection of papyri in the Americas, and professor of Ancient Greek & Roman Studies, has been a fierce advocate for involving undergraduates in papyrology research at Berkeley; such opportunities are rare at other universities. Working under Hickey’s supervision, undergraduate apprentice Will Sieving examined a 2,000-year-old fragment of papyrus using high-resolution digital images from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Hoping to better understand the monetary economy of Ptolemaic Egypt in preparation for his senior honors thesis in Classical Languages, Sieving had no expectation of what happened next. His translation of a much-debated word diverged from that of all previous translators. Positing the word to be the name of a man (Philoktas), Sieving turned to Hickey, who recognized the name as that of an Alexandrian political and religious delegate mentioned in other inscriptions from throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Hickey lauds the discovery as the most impressive made by an undergraduate during his two decades at the center.
URAP students at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life collaborated with curator Francesco Spagnolo and Department of Art Practice professor and faculty advisor Greg Niemeyer to digitize, process, and catalog more than 500 pieces of artwork by Arthur Szyk, a Polish-Jewish miniature artist and political caricaturist. “Digital assets are easily shared publicly,” Spagnolo said. “Once we have a digital representation of an item, we can connect with fellow travelers, meaning fellow scholars and experts, who are in different parts of the world, but we can all collaborate and learn.” The exhibition In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Art & Human Rights, supported by the Bay Area-based Taube Philanthropies and featuring works from the Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection at The Magnes, traveled to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans from 2022 to 2023.
Film & Media professor Nicole Starosielski, a leading expert in subsea cable networks, brought her project Sustainable Subsea Networks to Berkeley upon joining the faculty in 2023. Her 90+-page report presenting existing and potential sustainable practices for the subsea cable industry was featured at the 2023 COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai. She has involved a group of URAP students from across Berkeley departments in her work on the second phase of the report. Michael Brand, Isabelle Cherry, Ella Herbert, and Isabel Jijón focused on different sectors of the subsea cable industry for their research. These undergraduates, as part of their work on the project, traveled to the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s Annual Conference (PTC ’24) in Honolulu, Hawaii, where they received a standing ovation and were celebrated as the next generation of researchers.