Liberal arts like no other.

Indiana Jones has nothing on Aaron Stutz. Several years ago he and Liv Nilsson Stutz identified Mughr el-Hamamah (Cave of the Doves), located in a limestone outcrop in the Jordan Valley, opposite the Nablus Mountains of the West Bank. The Stutzes, a husband-and-wife team, led the first excavations of the cave in 2010 funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Since then, thousands of stone tools from the early Upper Paleolithic have been unearthed from there, revealing clues about how humans may have started organizing into more complex social groups by planning tasks and specializing in different technical skills. The Stutzes' discovery sits in the Levantine corridor midway between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. There, each generation expanding into Eurasia would have foraged for food and made campsites. "We don't know if these toolmakers were mainly Neanderthals or anatomically modern humans, but recent evidence from other studies now raises the possibility that they were a mix of different populations," Stutz says. "What we see at the Mughr el-Hamamah site is that individuals were starting to live, work and form families in larger, more culturally structured social networks."

Physicists help us understand how the physical world works. One of the pieces Frosso Seitaridou has made more knowable is Brownian diffusion. "Picture what it's like when you pour a bit of dye into a glass of water. You see clouds of the dye dispersing through the water, and eventually you see completely tinted water. What you're observing is Brownian diffusion," she explains. Seitaridou's book, Simple Brownian Diffusion, was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press and co-authored with Daniel T. Gillespie. Its audience includes students and researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering whose theoretical and experimental work concerns Brownian diffusion and the chemistry of living cells. Besides teaching physics during the academic year, Seitaridou is a mentor in Oxford's Summer Undergraduate Research at Emory (SURE) program, where she makes sure that the next generation of physicists is able to impart their knowledge as well.

Nitya Jacob is intent on ensuring that Oxford students get the very best science education possible. Her innovative courses, especially those incorporating research on nearby Arabia Mountain, have resulted in her recognition by the journal Science as one of only 15 recipients of its Inquiry-Based Instruction Prize. But Jacob thinks about improving science education for all undergraduates not just those she teaches at Oxford. She was named to a selective group—the PULSE 40 Vision and Change Leadership Fellows—a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health. The group identifies the changes needed to improve undergraduate life sciences education. She'll bring those ideas back to Oxford, where professors take their role seriously as leaders in the art of teaching.

Philosophy and sports can't possibly mix, right? Wrong, says Erin Tarver, assistant professor of philosophy. A self-proclaimed sports enthusiast, her forthcoming book, Sports Fandom and the Reproduction of Identity, investigates the meaning and value of sports fandom, with a look at both contemporary fan rituals and the history of sports fandom in the United States. Sports fans fascinate Tarver on several levels. As a philosopher, she's interested in understanding the nature of the human self: what kind of beings are we, after all, if we need practices like sports fandom to give us a stable sense of identity? Second, as a lifelong sports fan, she has tried to understand what makes sports so important to her personally. "What I argue in the book is that fans who wear shirts that say things like 'I bleed purple and gold' aren't too far from the truth. Sports fandom is not just important to us—it helps make up the very individuals that we are."

Are you a thrill seeker? A thrill avoider? Or somewhere in between? Ever wonder why some of us go for activities with an adrenaline rush while others are afraid to use a stepladder? Ken Carter is interested in those differences too. His new book on high-risk-seeking individuals will be published this year. He even created a quiz you can take to see where you fall on the risk-taking spectrum. Carter has a knack for being able to translate psychology research into everyday language, a skill he's demonstrated in publications such as Mental Floss magazine and appearances on news programs such as Connect with Kids and the Today show. Before joining Oxford's faculty, Carter was a senior assistant research scientist in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's famed Epidemic Intelligence Service, where his research focused on the relationship between smoking and the prevention of adolescent suicide. He's the recipient of awards from the National Institutes of Health; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and the University of Michigan. His classes in introductory psychology, neuroscience, and adult psychopathology are highly popular.

Henry Bayerle entered his first year of college intent on studying physics. But a Latin-immersion course he took the next summer changed all that. He was hooked on classics. "I loved the grammar and etymology—I saw in it a math-like structure. I changed my major to the classics and never turned back." Besides Latin and Greek, Bayerle teaches literature in translation, such as his course on the history of the Romans. He doesn't consider them dead languages but tools to help students appreciate their own language more and open up discussion to universal themes. Bayerle teaches a theory practice/serving learning course (TPSL) that reads Virgil's Aeneid, which takes place during the Trojan War. "None of my students have any direct experience with the military or war, so this can seem fairly distant to them," he says. TPSL courses get students out into the real world. His students talk to veterans of American wars from World War II to present day conflicts. "I want them to develop a relationship with someone to whom they can attach stories. I believe this makes them read the Aeneid better and helps them write about it better. When you care, you read and write more carefully."