Joyce Chen is professor of economics in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State. Her research focuses on demographic differences in labor market outcomes; the complex relationships between migration, climate change, and economic development; and the intrahousehold allocation of resources. She is active in efforts aimed at enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion and supporting the nonprofit sector.
Bart Elmore is professor of environmental history and a core faculty member of the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State. He is an award-winning author of three books, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (W. W. Norton, 2014), Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future (W. W. Norton, 2021), and Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet (Ferris & Ferris, 2023). In 2022, he was honored with the Dan David Prize, the world’s largest history prize.
Benjamin Hoffman is a creative writer and the College of Arts & Sciences Designated Professor of French & Francophone Literature. A native of France, he earned a licence de philosophie and a licence de lettres modernes from the Université Bordeaux III, as well as a master’s degree in French Literature from the Sorbonne. He also graduated in literature and philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm). After completing his Ph.D. at Yale University, he joined the faculty of The Ohio State University in 2015.
Hoffman has received several fellowships and awards, including the Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities, the Marguerite A. Peyre Prize for outstanding dissertation, and a creative writing fellowship from the National Book Center (France). In 2024, the French government named him Chevalier in the Order of the Palmes Académiques.
He is the founding director of the Center of Excellence at Ohio State, which promotes Franco-American relations and the dissemination of French and Francophone culture in the US. Within the Center, he leads the Jules Verne Writing Residency, a creative writing program welcoming French-speaking novelists to Columbus. Through French Press, its YouTube literary channel, the Center of Excellence conducts regular interviews with novelists and thinkers making headlines in France. Learn more
Ryan Joyce is an associated faculty member in the Department of French and Italian at Ohio State. His research and teaching focus on Caribbean literary and cultural studies, 20th- and 21st-century global Francophone studies, and gender and sexuality, with particular attention to queer Caribbean cultural production and activism, Haitian studies, and decolonial studies and pedagogy. His work has appeared in Études Francophones, Small Axe, The Black Scholar, The Journal of Haitian Studies, and Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory.
Jonathan Mullins is assistant professor of Italian at Ohio State. The main concerns of his research are the history of the Italian left, the use and representation of the body, and the way media facilitate the creation of mass-, sub-, and countercultures.
Fabienne Münch, PhD, has been chair of the Department of Design at The Ohio State University since July 2022. She brings to the department a balance of professional and academic experience in design environments. From 2013-2017, she taught at the Université de Montréal, where she was the first female elected as director of the School of Design; there, she upheld multiple curricula reforms and new graduate studies programs from conception to implementation. From 2017-2022, she served as Global Executive Director in the Office of the President at the University of Chicago, and subsequently led Global Research Partnerships for the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. She planned the creation on the Chicago campus of an International Research Center between the French National Scientific Research Agency (CNRS) and the University of Chicago. Prior to joining academia, her professional career was of a future-focused leader across the international landscape, where she led transformative R&D-driven strategies, across a range of multicultural environments. She moved from Paris to the Herman Miller headquarters to lead ethnographic research on workstyle trends in Asia and Latin America. Over the following twelve years, she held various positions in the R&D Department: in the company’s R&D incubator, the Creative Office; as director of the Ideation Studio, the fuzzy front end of R&D, and as the global team leader of the new Mira work chair project.
Dorothy Noyes is director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State. She studies the traditional public sphere in Europe, the policy careers of culture concepts, and performance and ritual in international relations. Among her books are Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2016); and the coauthored Sustaining Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Guide for the Academy (University of Illinois Press, 2017). The Global Politics of Exemplarity, coedited with Tobias Wille, will appear in autumn 2025 from Bristol University Press.
Maurice Stevens is professor in the Department of Comparative Studies and associate dean for engagement for the College of Arts and Sciences. They teach theories and methods of interdisciplinary cultural and technological studies. Stevens’s most recent academic research has focused on the application of critical trauma theory in multiple clinical, social, organizational, and institutional contexts. Their work with individuals and organizations focuses on processes designed to amplify the ability to create change that is systemic and transformative. As associate dean for engagement, Stevens drives a signature approach to engaging community and other partners by orienting projects around critical community needs.
Lucille Toth is an associate professor of French, affiliated with Ohio State’s Department of Dance. Her academic and artistic work explores the intersections of health humanities, dance, and migration. She has published over a dozen articles and authored Danses et pandémies: Du sida à la covid-19 (Varia Press, 2022), examining the links between dance and pandemics from AIDS to COVID-19. She is also the founder and artistic director of On Board(hers), a dance project inspired by the testimonies of people from diverse countries of origin. Her work has been featured on media outlets and programs such as NPR, WOSU, Broad and High, and Columbus Alive.