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.

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.” 

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.

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.

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.

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 mu...

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 to discuss his recent work on how political partisans (those who strongly identify as liberal or conservative) differ from independent v...

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 moc...

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 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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

Benjamin Hoffman – 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 discusse...

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.

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.

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.

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 mathema...

Adriana Dawes, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Molecular Genetics, 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.

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.

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...

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.