Alex Russell

Alex Russell - Department Editor, Self & Society

Alex Russell covers the College's departments, centers and programs in many of the social sciences, including: Cognitive Science, Communication, Economics, History, International Relations, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, the Center for Mind and Brain, the Center for Poverty and Inequality Research and the Global Migration Center.

Russell has spent more than 10 years at UC Davis communicating social sciences research for uptake and impact through news and feature stories, policy briefs, reports, social media campaigns and other forms. He has served as a writer at the Graduate School of Management and led communications for the Center for Poverty and Inequality Research and the Institute for Social Sciences. Immediately prior to joining the College of Letters and Science, he served as communications lead for a $30 million federally funded research program in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences focused on international food security.

He received a bachelor's degree in literature from UC Santa Cruz and a master's degree in English from the UC Davis Graduate Creative Writing Program. He is a member of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW).

student working in the lab

Understanding Fear to Rob it of its Strength

  • by Alex Russell
Psychology Ph.D. student Zachary Oakland, a military veteran, is development a new understanding of social anxiety. What drives him, he said, is a need to understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition that many veterans bring home.
building and windows covered with ivy

A Century of Elites-only Education

  • by Alex Russell
For the past five years, economist Santiago Pérez has studied the socioeconomic makeup of students at elite institutions. A new working paper shows that neither free tuition nor the introduction of standardized testing had any impact on the backgrounds of students attending elite institutions for the last hundred years.
Coretta Scott King

Fighting for a Fulfilling Life

  • by Alex Russell
As historian Traci Parker writes a new biography, she is learning just how much Coretta Scott King contributed to her husband’s ideas and actions, and how his story is also very much her own.
black and white image of women standing on a grassy field in a neighborhood

Taking a Closer Look at Black History in the U.S.

  • by Alex Russell
Traci Parker, an associate professor of history, is working to fill out what we know about the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the U.S., and in the process is building deeper connections to the past.
students walking on campus

Undergrad Cheat Codes to Build a Future in Research

  • by Alex Russell
When Bayleigh Baldwin, a linguistics major and Letters and Science student ambassador, first arrived at UC Davis, she didn’t really know what it meant to be at a research university. Now a senior, she is interviewing with graduate programs across the country where she might launch her research career.