UMass Lowell Experts Assist Print, Radio and TV Journalists
10/02/2015
UMass Lowell faculty experts are world-class researchers and scholars in a spectrum of fields – from science and engineering, business and education to the social sciences and humanities – who lend authority to news and feature stories in an engaging and relatable way. Experts are available in person, by phone or e-mail as sources for print, radio and TV journalists. TV options include live broadcast interviews in person or via satellite.
This month’s hot topics and sources are:
- Halloween – Bridget Marshall, an expert on the literary traditions behind Gothic novels and horror stories, the New England witchcraft trials of the 1600s, witch-focused tourism and all things that go bump in the night. Why is popular culture obsessed with zombies and vampires? Marshall has the answer. She teaches English and American Studies in UMass Lowell’s College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
- Breast cancer treatment – Prakash Rai, whose research is at the forefront of theranostics, an emerging field in medicine through which doctors create individualized protocols for patients. As part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month coverage, Rai can talk about how nanotechnology helps target the delivery of cancer-fighting drugs in patients to reduce collateral damage to healthy cells and decrease toxic side-effects. He teaches chemical engineering in UMass Lowell’s College of Engineering.
- Domestic violence – Eve Buzawa, an authority on the causes and consequences. As the country observes Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Buzawa can discuss why friends and family don’t get involved to help victims, victims’ struggle to leave their abusers and how police and social workers respond. The co-author of a bestselling textbook on understanding domestic violence, she is the director of UMass Lowell’s School of Criminology and Justice Studies.
- Jack Kerouac – Todd Tietchen, an expert on the life and works of the “On the Road” author and his beat generation contemporaries. Tietchen and a colleague visited Kerouac’s former home four decades after the writer’s death in October 1969 to bring a cache of his belongings to his native Lowell at the behest of the executor of Kerouac’s literary estate. Those personal effects are on display at UMass Lowell beginning on Thursday, Oct. 8. Tietchen, an English professor, can talk about what it was like to visit Kerouac’s house and why the author remains an icon of American culture.
For a complete list of UMass Lowell experts, see www.uml.edu/experts. The university’s media relations team is ready to help connect you. Contact Nancy Cicco, 978-934-4944, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu or Christine Gillette, 978-934-2209, Christine_Gillette@uml.edu.