Voices of Excellence from Arts and Sciences

Michelle Wibbelsman by Voices of Excellence from Arts and Sciences

Vladimir Sloutsky, professor of psychology, researches conceptual development and interrelationships between cognition and language. His most recent publication describes how humans can learn about categories without explicit teaching.

David Brakke, professor and Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity in the department of history, studies and teaches the history and literature of ancient Christianity from its origins, through the fifth century, with special interest in asceticism monasticism, Gnosticism, biblical interpretation, and Egyptian Christianity. He discusses why the Gnostics and their views were considered so dangerous and what the Gospel of Judas reveals about these beliefs. Hear the whole discussion with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Doug Alsdorf, professor in the school of earth sciences, researches satellite hydrology, large tropical wetlands, and geophysics. He describes himself as driven by curiosity, to ask "Why is that there?" or "What is that over there?" Join him as he discusses the value of scientific curiosity and more with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Jesse Fox, associate professor in the school of communication, researches the effects and implications of new media technologies, including virtual worlds, video games, social network sites, and mobile applications. Virtual reality has gone through booms and busts in the 15 years she's been studying it, so she talks about what it can and cannot do (ex., VR isn't an empathy machine) with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Michael White, professor of linguistics, researches how to enable computers to usefully converse with people in natural language. He's seen the ability of predictive text become so good that it's created concerns about the ethical uses of it. He discusses this and more with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Ruchika Prakash, professor of psychology and Director of the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging, researches neuroplasticity in the context of healthy aging, and neurological disorders, specifically, multiple sclerosis. Her lab's findings include ways that meditation can improve your behavioral and neural functioning. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Isis Barra Costa is an assistant professor in Contemporary Brazilian Cultural and Literary Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese with research interests in Brazilian literature and culture, cyber literature and art activism in the Americas performance studies, and Latin American cinema, among others. Her research started with the question of how religious men and women from different parts of the African continent would explain what happened historically in the new world and how it changed expressions like sacred oratory. On this week's Voices of Excellence, she discusses with host David Staley how to gain recognition for the best parts of the culture that are not recognized by historiography or in literature.

Tristram McPherson, professor of philosophy, examines foundational philosophical questions about ethics, specifically meta-ethics; epistemology; and conceptual ethics. He looks at whether there are ethical facts that answer ethical questions and what the relationship is between God and ethical claims, among other areas. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence on Soundcloud

John Grinstead, professor and interim chair in Spanish and Portuguese, researches developmental linguistics, developmental semantics and pragmatics, and children's comprehension of syntax. Ten years ago, he began using stop-motion movies in his experiments on language development, and the Despicable Me minions were a well-known and experimentally useful choice. For more about how minions reveal the workings of language acquisition, listen to his discussion with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Virginia Rich, associate professor of microbiology and the director of the eMERGE Biology Integration Institute, studies global change microbiology, microbial meta-omics, and "Genes-to-Ecosystems" inquiry. She's spurred on in her work by the problem of not knowing how the biosphere as a whole will respond to climate change. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Sam White, professor of history, studies environmental history and uses natural and human records to reconstruct past climate variability and extreme weather. He discusses the methods that historians use to get a more complete picture of the past, such as how an intense drought and famine impacted the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Professor of history David Steigerwald teaches courses in 20th-century American history from World War I through the 1960s. He also researches and writes about alienation, a composite term that refers to the sense people have of not really being in control of their everyday lives. His emerging book argues that post WWII power structures pushed toward a hyper organization of society that devalued individuals. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Richard Samuels, professor of philosophy, researches cognitive development, reasoning, computational models of psychological capacities, and modular theories of cognition. He describes why cognitive science is different from psychology and why children can acquire the ability to count and to do basic arithmetic. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Greg Anderson, professor of history, specializes in ancient Greek history, historical thoughts, and critical theory. In his most recent book The Realness of Things Past, he proposes a new way of doing history that is a fundamentally different way of thinking about reality for people who lived in the past. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Alexander Thompson, professor of political science and senior faculty fellow at the Merson Center for International Security Studies, conducts research in international relations with an emphasis on the politics of international organizations and law. From the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement, countries have tried different tactics to deal with climate change. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Tom Hawkins, associate professor of classics, looks at the ways that societies create social hierarchies and how the lower ends of those hierarchies interact with the higher. His forthcoming book explores the way Greek and Roman literary models and themes have been used, appropriated, and hacked by Haitian authors. He describes this and more to host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Sarah-Grace Heller, associate professor of French, specializes in medieval French and Occitan literature, language, and material culture. Her most recent book is a cultural history of fashion in a medieval age. She describes her sources from sumptuary laws to conduct literature to poetry and beyond to host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Scott Levi, professor and chair of the Department of History and interim chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, specializes in the social and economic history of Central Asia. His most recent book is The Bukharan Crisis: A Connected History of 18th-Century Central Asia, which he describes as "the first time I've ever written a book by accident." For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Bruce Weinberg, professor of economics, studies the economics of innovation and creativity. In this area, potentially small numbers of individuals can have a large impact on how our understanding and knowledge evolves, which is rare among economic activities. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of

Gregory Jusdanis, Humanities Distinguished Professor of Classics, researches modern Greek literature and culture, including the poet C. P. Cavafy. His recent work has been a biography of Cavafy, co-written with Peter Jeffries, exploring, among other areas, how Cavafy rejected his early poetry and found new expressions in his later years. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Kevin Richards, lecturer and Outreach Coordinator in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, defines the metaverse as the embodied Internet. His research follows the work of John Dewey who argued that the more immersed people are in what they're doing, the more they'll remember and be able to learn. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Michael Mercil, Emeritus Professor of Art has created sculpture, drawing, painting, landscape architecture, film, and performance for regional and national exhibitions. His installations at Ohio State have included bean fields by the Wexner Center and a virtual pasture of Shetland sheep. He joins host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence on Soundcloud and iTunes to describe his work and academic interests

Christian Kleinbub, professor of history of art, studies the arts of the Italian Renaissance, with particular focus on issues of image theory, naturalism, the body, and period conceptions of vision and the visionary. He joins host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence podcast on Soundcloud and iTunes to describe his research and how where vision "landed" in the body was of central importance to artists like Michelangelo.

Mark Moritz, professor and graduate studies chair in anthropology, studies the transformation of African pastoral systems, specifically examining how pastoralists adapt to changing ecological, political, and institutional conditions. He shares some of the results of his research with pastoralists in the far north region of Cameroon with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Kotaro Nakanishi, associate professor of biochemistry, studies Argonaute proteins and how they join with microRNA to form complexes in cells. Errors in this process can lead to many different types of diseases, including cancer and autism.

Associate professor of design Rebekah Matheney studies interior design, sustainable design, retail experience design, curricular economy, and higher education design. Her recent work has examined slow retail, how retail design can impact all areas of sustainability by slowing down its pace, similar to slow food and slow fashion. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Elizabeth Hewitt, professor of English, studies African-American literature, American literature before 1900, and economics in literature. Her most recent book, Speculative Fictions, examines the economy in the early United States with a focus on Alexander Hamilton and his attempts "to explain economic science in a way that didn't just depend on empiricism." For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Russ Fazio--the Harold E. Burt Professor of Social Psychology--researches attitude formation, change, and accessibility; attitude-behavior consistency; and social cognition. His work in social cognition seeks to understand the thought processes that underlie social psychological phenomenon. Join him and host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Jared Gardner, Joseph V. Denney Designated Professor of English and director of popular culture studies, has a wide set of interests, including finding "striking examples of 19th century comics and cartoons" describing how humans impact the environment. Join him and host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Distinguished Professor of English Robyn Warhol researches a variety of subjects, from narrative theory to Regency and Victorian novels to feminist theory to television narrative. She sees great parallels between binge watching tv shows and reading Victorian novels straight through, something that contemporary readers couldn't do. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Mark Rudoff, associate professor of cello in the School of Music, performs with the Janus String Quartet, the Galileo Trio and Chiarina Piano Quartet. He joins host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence to discuss how professors of music bring a different kind of research and scholarship to their roles. He also explains why the double-faced god Janus represents his interest in music, which draws from the past while creating the future.

Richard Petty, Distinguished University Professor of social psychology, researches the situational and individual difference factors responsible for changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. He joins host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence on Soundcloud and iTunes to discuss his recent work on how political partisans (those who strongly identify as liberal or conservative) differ from independent voters in the overall strength of their attitudes. He's found that independent voters often have greater animosity toward one candidate than they have liking toward the candidate that they were going to vote for, and this negativity is growing.

Lanier Holt--associate professor in communication--researches journalism, media effects and social psychology, with a focus on the impact media messages have on audience perceptions of African Americans, women, and other traditionally marginalized groups. He shares with host David Staley how he prepares students in his crisis communication class by having them represent contentious clients at mock press conference, such as Donald Trump after the Capital Insurrection. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Maria Miriti--associate professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology--uses experimental and demographic methods to address factors that regulate plant populations and communities. She joins David Staley, host of ASC's Voices of Excellence podcast on Soundcloud and iTunes, to discuss her research, which has stretched from desserts in the Joshua Tree National Park to the Amazonian tropics to grasslands.

Allison Bean--associate professor in speech and hearing science--researches language development in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. She's especially interested in how people use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems in place of spoken language. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Piers Norris Turner--associate professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values--researches utilitarianism and liberal political thoughts, especially as it relates to the moral and political philosophy of John Stuart Mill. He argues that Mill was far more than his famous essay on liberty, with wide-ranging interests in a variety of philosophical and political areas. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Andrew Martin--professor of sociology and interim associate executive dean for undergraduate education--studies working class mobilization and unions, particularly their use of social movement strategies. He's also researched the ways in which groups collaborate to curb the growth of corporate power in America. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Dana Carlisle Kletchka -- assistant professor in the department of arts administration, education and policy -- studies the history, theory, and philosophy of art museum education. Her research has examined museum practices and how art educators are treated in large institutional contexts. In addition, she looks at the surprisingly different roles and intentions of art educators and art historians in museums. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of

Scott McGraw, professor and chair of the department of anthropology, is a researcher, biological anthropologist, evolutionary anatomist, and primate behavior analyst. He observes animals in the wild to see how their physical movements, for example, result from bone structures. Biological anthropologists then use this information to understand how extinct animals might have moved, such as our human ancestors. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Benjamin Hoffmann--associate professor in the department of French and Italian, director of the Center for Excellence, and novelist--researches 18th-century French literature and philosophy, transatlantic studies, contemporary French literature, and creative writing. His recent publication is The Paradoxes of Posterity, a philosophical inquiry on the concept of posterity. He discusses this, digital humanities, and more with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Robert Holub, Ohio eminent scholar and professor and chair of the department of Germanic languages and literatures, studies 19th and 20th century intellectual, cultural, and literary history, especially Friedrich Nietzsche, Heinrich Heine, German realism, and literary and aesthetic theory. He discusses the historical setting of Nietzsche and how this impacts the ways we understand his writing. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Eric Bielefeld, professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing science, studies auditory physiology, especially inner ear pathology. His most recent work involves modeling how exposure to HIV medications during pregnancy influences the development of auditory systems and the impact of cooling the inner ear on chemotherapy efficacy. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Robert Bond, associate professor in the School of Communication, researches political behavior and attitudes, specifically, how social networks influence political behavior and communication. His work as a computational social scientist involves building models that mimic human behavior and studying the results of interactions. For more of his discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Skylar Cranmer, the Carter Phillips and Sue Henry Professor of Political Science, researches network science, such as forecasting the evolution of complex networks or exploring whether brain scans can predict political partisanship. He joins host David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence to discuss network science, which incorporates fields from political science to physics to mathematics to biology, among others.

Adriana Dawes, associate professor of mathematics, studies mathematical biology, mathematical modeling of cell polarization and chemotaxis, and differential equations. She traces how organisms control their grow from one to trillions of cells, which involves countless decisions about organization and function. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Jay Gupta, professor of physics, explores the properties of novel materials at the atomic scale to address problems in energy conversion and advanced computing. Via scanning tunneling microscopy, his group examine items that are a billionth of a meter. For more of his discussion of nanomaterials, semiconductors and how to spell your name in atoms, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

Jennifer Willging, associate professor and interim chair of the department of French and Italian, specializes in 20th and 21st century French literature and culture. Her work explores literature that attempts to understand contemporary society and important influences, such as technology. For more of her discussion with David Staley, listen to this week's Voices of Excellence

John Low, associate professor of comparative studies and director of the Newark Earthworks Center, studies American Indian histories, literatures, religions, and cultures, and native environmental perspectives and practices, among other areas. He joins David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence to discuss the Newark Earthworks and what makes the two remaining mounds so special, on par with Stonehenge.

Andrea Sims, associate professor in the departments of linguistics, and Slavic and East European languages and cultures, studies theoretical morphology, meaning what kinds of words and structures can exist in a particular language. She explores what speakers know, often unconsciously, about what is possible in their language. Listen to her discussion with David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence

Bryan Mark, professor of geography, studies climate-glacier-hydrologic dynamics over different time scales and serves as state climatologist of Ohio. He joins David Staley on this week's Voices of Excellence