Associate Professor

Nathan Whelan: Rediscovering the Extinct

by

Nathan Whelan, Associate Professor of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology and Director of the Museum of Biological Diversity, discusses the core mission of the museum. The museum focuses on research rather than public exhibits, emphasizing the importance of understanding and documenting natural history through collections of various organisms such as mollusks, insects, plants, birds, and mammals. He highlights the significance of freshwater mollusks in maintaining healthy ecosystems and outlines his lab’s efforts in using genomic data to understand and conserve these organisms. Whelan shares instances of discovering species thought to be extinct, adding to the conservation initiatives. He also describes plans to expand the museum’s engagement with the community with outreach events, including the Open House on March 28th, 2026.

VoE- Nathan WhelanDownload

Sarah Neville: Exploring the Bounds of Book History

by

Sarah Neville, Associate Professor of English and Theater, Film, and Media Arts, discusses her role as a book historian, editorial theorist, and creative director of Lord Denney’s Players. Neville emphasizes the importance of the materiality of books, not just as containers for text, but as objects that hold meaning and historical significance. Neville also elaborates on her work with editorial theory, specifically how scholars determine the true text of Shakespearean works given the lack of original manuscripts. She talks about Lord Denney’s Players, an academic theater company at Ohio State, and their unique approach to exploring textual questions in Shakespeare’s plays through performance.

VoE – Sarah NevilleDownload

Nyama McCarthy-Brown: Everybody is a Dancer

by

Nyama McCarthy-Brown, Associate Professor of Dance Pedagogy through Community Engagement, discusses her work and achievements in dance pedagogy and community engagement. She also talks about the Ohio State Artist Laureate program, and her experience as the inaugural Laureate in 2023. Dr. Brown talks with host David Staley about her book, Skin Colored Pointes, which explores the experiences of women of color in ballet, and how her pedagogical work aims to honor diverse dance histories.

VoE – Nyama McCarthy-BrownDownload

Ashley Hope Pérez: Exploring Uncomfortable Narratives in Literature

by

Ashley Hope Pérez, Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies, discusses her latest book, Deformative Fictions: Narrative Ethics and Cruelty in Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature. Pérez explores difficult and uncomfortable narratives in literature and explains how these fictions challenge readers and why such narratives are important. She and host David Staley discuss her experience with book banning, particularly her novel Out of Darkness, and explore the impact of book censorship on readers and authors. Additionally, Pérez describes editing the anthology Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers Rights and leading her Unite to Read project.

VoE – Ashley Hope PérezDownload

Kate Shannon: A Picture is Worth (More Than) a Thousand Pixels

by

Kate Shannon, Associate Professor of Art and the Ohio State University 2025-26 Artist Laureate, focuses on photography, and digitally manipulating and recontextualizing existing photographs to explore their connection to time, history, and the digital age. Shannon is fascinated with the physical deterioration of photographs and how it contributes to their stories. Host David Staley and Shannon discuss her works, including “Construction/Destruction,” in which she animates decayed Wright Brothers’ glass plate negatives, and “The Insignificant,” in which she treats rejected Farm Security Administration negatives. She also reflects on her students’ interactions with both historical and modern digital photography and the implications of generative AI in the art world.

Photograph by Carlos G. Vertanessian

VoE – Kate ShannonDownload

Björn Köhnlein: From Sounds to Language

by

Björn Köhnlein, Associate Professor of Linguistics, studies sound systems in languages. He and host David Staley discuss how speech melodies and intonational patterns distinguish between statements and questions and the challenges of historical linguistic studies. Köhnlein shares his journey into linguistics, his fascination with generative grammar, and his current research projects, including the surprisingly complex rules that govern how curse words can be embedded into other words.

VoE – Björn KöhnleinDownload

Eric Schoon: How Do Social Scientists Produce Knowledge?

by

Eric Schoon, Associate Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University, discusses his research interests, such as how social scientists produce knowledge and what makes something have legitimacy. He touches upon his work on linear regression in the book Regression Inside Out, co-authored with David Melamed and Ronald Breiger, and shares insights from interviewing ethnographers about their fieldwork in Turkey. Additionally, he reflects on his own journey to sociology from a background in viola performance and philosophy.

VoE – Eric Schoon 02.13.2025_transcriptDownload

Jaime Sabel: Scaffolding to Success

by

Jaime Sabel, Associate Professor in Molecular Genetics and Director of the Center for Life Sciences Education (CLSE), discusses the CLSE’s role in housing the biology major and collaborating with other life sciences departments. Her FRAMER and MASTER educational scaffolds support students’ metacognitive skills to enhance their understanding of complex biological concepts. Sabel also highlights her STEM Ambassadors program which aims to bridge the gap between scientists and high school students, fostering better public communication of science. She concludes by sharing her journey from developmental genetics to biology education research and outlining future research directions for her lab.

Jaime Sabel PodcastDownload

Erin Lin Discusses When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia

by

Erin Lin, Associate Professor of Political Science, and author of When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia discusses her research. She focuses on the the enduring impact on Cambodian agriculture and economic development of unexploded ordnance from US secret bombings during the Vietnam War. The bombs remain dangerous, contributing to injuries and deaths, while severely affecting agricultural productivity and household incomes. She describes the extensive efforts required for de-mining and the socio-political challenges faced by farmers, such as land grabbing.

Voices Erin LinDownload

Christo Sevov: Pushing the Limits of Catalysis

by

Dr. Christo Sevov, Associate Professor in the The Ohio State University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, shares his research interests. Dr. Sevov explains the significance of catalysis, particularly homogeneous catalysis, and how it accelerates chemical reactions by using abundant, affordable metals like nickel and copper. He describes his research in polyvinyl chloride (PVC), its inherent instability, and the strategies his lab uses to make it more robust. Dr. Sevov outlines his lab’s contributions to pharmaceuticals, such as developing new tools for drug synthesis that reduce waste.

VoE_Cristo-Sevov-podcastDownload

Carmen Winant: The Art of Labor

by

Carmen Winant, Associate Professor and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, discusses her work in the Whitney Biennial. Winant’s installation, “The Last Safe Abortion,” consists of nearly 3,000 photographs depicting everyday activities in abortion clinics, emphasizing the labor and commitment of the workers. She details her approach to large-scale photography installations and discusses her previous project, “My Birth,” which visually documents childbirth and the power dynamics embedded in its representation.

Carmen Winant transcript

Kevin McClatchy, Ohio State’s Artist Laureate Works from the Heartbeat

by

Kevin McClatchy, Associate Professor of Theatre at Ohio State University, will serve as Ohio State’s Artist Laureate for the 2024-2025 academic year, focusing on expanding his projects to underserved communities in Ohio. He discusses his work with the Shakespeare and Autism Project, which uses theater games based on Shakespeare’s texts to help autistic children express themselves. McClatchy also describes the Hunter Heartbeat Method, which uses the rhythm of Shakespeare’s language to engage children. He also touches on his project working with military veterans, using Shakespeare to help them process their experiences and build a sense of community.

Kevin McClatchy transcriptDownload

Start Dancing With Devils, Says Michelle Wibbelsman

by

Michelle Wibbelsman, Associate Professor of Latin American Indigenous Cultures, ethnographic studies and ethnomusicology in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, studies ritual and politics, aesthetics and power, festival and ritual practices of meaning-making memory in indigenous communities in northern Ecuador. She also discusses the “Dancing with Devils” exhibit now on display in the Barnett Center.

Start-Dancing-With-Devils-Says-Michelle-Wibbelsman_otter_aiDownload

Jesse Fox: Virtual Reality Mythbuster

by

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.

Jesse-Fox_-Virtual-Reality-Mythbuster_otter_aiDownload

Plants Can Move: Maria Miriti Tells Us How

by

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.

Why Do People Write? Benjamin Hoffmann Thinks It’s About Posterity

by

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 discusses this, digital humanities, and more with David Staley on this week’s Voices of Excellence

How Do Cells Make Decisions?: Adriana Dawes Has Answers

by

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.

“We Are Interested in Creating Understanding:” Jennifer Willging On Cultural Studies

by

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 On Understanding the Importance of the Newark Earthworks

by

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 On What Can and Can’t Be a Word

by

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.

Julie Golomb Looks at How Our Brains Make Sense of the World

by

Julie Golomb, Associate Professor of Psychology, researches the interactions between visual perception, attention, memory, and eye movements using human behavioral and computational cognitive neuroscience techniques. She’s especially interested in questions like, “How do our brains convert patterns of light into rich perceptual experiences, and what can we learn from perceptual errors?”

Robin Judd Describes What Military Marriages Were Like After the Holocaust

by

Robin Judd, Associate Professor of History, explores how European and North African Jewish women met and married American, British, and Canadian soldiers and officers after the Holocaust in her latest book, Love, Liberation, and Loss: Jewish Military Marriages after the Holocaust. Her research illuminates how these couples developed relationships, what policies regulated their marriages, and what happened to the women when they moved to other countries with their husbands to face acculturation in the aftermath of trauma.

Miranda Martinez Describes the Best Way to Save for Retirement

by

Miranda Martinez, an Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies, researches race and public policy and economic, sociological, and cultural economies, among other areas. She looks at the impact of financial coaching in communities of color and how having an automated monthly savings plan can be a significant benefit over having to decide consciously to save every month.

Jennifer Suchland on the Role of the Scholar in Society

by

Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures Jennifer Suchland is a 2020 Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Scholars and Society Fellow. She describes how the role of scholars in society is also the role of education in society, especially democracies. Her current research focuses on the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, which she discusses with David Staley on this week’s Voices of Excellence.

Building Capacity: Joni Acuff on Collectives, Movement Work and the Arts

by

Joni Acuff is an Associate Professor, Graduate Studies Chair, and Diversity Chair in the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy. Recently, she’s been researching the collective work of artists and art educators of color, with an eye to recognizing and supporting emerging social justice collectives and coalitions.

Pioneering in the Language Program Director Field: Holly Nibert

by

Holly Nibert, Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics and Language Program Director in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, researches phonology and phonetics, the acquisition of a second language sound system, and the principles and practices of second language classroom instruction. Recently, she’s been writing a book about how to be a language program director, in an effort to help professionalize the position.

Newspaper Ads Are a Great Way to Learn About a Culture: Treva Lindsey

by

Associate Professor Treva Lindsey of the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies specializes in African American women’s history, Black popular and expressive culture, Black feminism(s), hip hop studies, critical race and gender theory, and sexual politics. She researched Black women’s beauty culture by delving into newspapers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries for ads to learn how products were advertised, who advertised them, and who were the models, among other questions.

Jennifer Brello on Helping Patients Learn to Speak Again

by

Jennifer Brello, Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science, serves as the Director of the Ohio State University Aphasia Initiative, a free program for people living with loss of communication ability due to brain injury. Aphasia can make mundane tasks like ordering a cup of coffee very challenging, and Brello describes to host David Staley the benefits of therapy at the institute on this week’s episode of Voices of Excellence.

Julia Nelson Hawkins on Researching a Pandemic While Living in One

by

Julia Nelson Hawkins, Associate Professor in the Department of Classics, leads a group of clinicians and humanities scholars in the Discovery Themes-funded project “Humanities in the Pandemic” that seeks to increase academia and public awareness about the role that arts and humanities play in global health crises. She talks with David Staley about the project and what we can learn from previous pandemics.

Katra Byram Asks “How Do Germans Regard the Mothers of World War II?”

by

Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature Katra Byram, is a core member of Project Narrative and co-editor of The Ohio State University Press book series. Her current research examines the complicated and, for her, ambivalent roles played by German mothers and grandmothers in post-war German literature.

Nicholas Breyfogle on the Impact of Discounting Russia in 1991

by

“There was a time after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 where Americans, others in Europe, and other places in the world discounted Russia as a global power. And this was a mistake,” says Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor, Director of the Goldberg Center, and an expert on Russian and Soviet history and global environmental history, especially the history of water. Listen in as he describes the impact of this mistake all the way to our current times.

Prof. Meow Hui Goh On How People Experience the Collapse of a Society

by

Meow Hui Goh, an Associate Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, researches medieval Chinese literature, medieval Chinese literary and cultural history, memory and text in medieval China, and the instrumentality of medieval Chinese literature. She is completing a new book manuscript, The Double Life of Chaos: Living Memory and Literature in Early Medieval China, 180s–300s, which covers the collapse of the Han Dynasty.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (Matter) Says Annika Peter

by

Annika Peter, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy, works at the interface of particle physics and astronomy to discover the secrets of dark matter. She shares her research on galaxies, particles, and constellations.

Prof. Piperata Looks at the Impact on Health of Adapting to Your Circumstances

by

Associate Professor of Anthropology Barbara Piperata applies an evolutionary and critical biocultural perspective to the study of nutritional anthropology, food security, and reproductive energetics. She’s especially interested in what happens to people’s health as they adapt to their circumstances. She explains her findings to David Staley on this week’s episode.

Prof. Piperata Looks at the Impact on Health of Adapting to Your CircumstancesDownload

Do You Form a Mental Image of a Podcast Host? Kathryn Campbell-Kibler Has Research For You

by

Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, researches sociolinguistic variation, small differences in pronunciation, word choice, and syntactic structures that listeners use to form an impression of a speaker. She also discusses her “See Your Speech” linguistics project, an interactive website that gives users visual displays based on acoustic analysis of their own speech.

VoE – Kathryn Campbell-KiblerDownload

What Popular Soft Drink Gets its Caffeine from Waste Tea Leaves and Coal? Bart Elmore Knows

by

Bart Elmore, Associate Professor of History, is a core faculty member of the Ohio State Sustainability Institute and author of the book Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca Cola Capitalism. He joins David Staley this week on Voices to discuss the history and business practices of large companies like Coca Cola, Monsanto, and Bayer.

VoE – Bart ElmoreDownload

When Proteins Go Wrong: Amanda Hummon’s Cancer Research

by

Amanda Hummon, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, researches the intersection of analytical chemistry and chemical biology with a focus on cancer biology, especially its origins and how different drugs can impact tumor growth. Join Dr. Hummon for her discussion with David Staley on this week’s Voices of Excellence.

VoE – Amanda HummonDownload

From Hammer to Nutcrackers to Pins: The Increasing Sophistication of Math with Roman Holowinsky

by

Math has been studied for thousands of years, so what could be left to discover? Plenty says Roman Holowinsky, associate professor of mathematics and the managing director and co-founder of the Erdős Institute. He studies analytic number theory and aims to find the simplest and most elegant way to accomplish a proof.

VoE – Roman HolowinskyDownload

Amy Youngs Wants You to Get Inside of Photographs

by

Amy Youngs, an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences, creates biological art, interactive sculptures, and digital media works that explore relationships between technology and our changing concept of nature and self. Her exhibit at The Ohio State Urban Arts Center features photographs of Flushing Meadows, Corona Park that have been mapped into three-dimensional space, so viewers “feel like [they’re] there… and see these photographs as almost objects that [they] can pick up and move around.”

VoE – Amy YoungsDownload

Can We Teach Hope? Jennifer Cheavens Says “Yes”

by

Jennifer Cheavens, Associate Professor of Psychology at The Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences, joins David Staley this week on Voices of Excellence podcast to discuss positive psychology, prosocial behavior, and how hope is defined as a research topic. 

Can We Teach Hope? Jennifer Cheavens Says %22Yes%22_otter_aiDownload

Karen Hutzel Describes the Making of Art and Cultural Policy

by

Associate Professor Karen Hutzel is Chair of the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy and interim Chair of the Department of Art. She recently discussed cultural policy and collaborative art making with David Staley on the Voices of Excellence podcast.

Karen Hutzel Describes the Making of Art and Cultural Policy_otter_aiDownload

Hearing Loss Can Slow Learning to Read, Says Prof. Gail Whitelaw

by

Gail Whitelaw, Clinical Associate Professor of Audiology in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science, joins David Staley on Voices of Excellence to discuss audiology, the importance of early hearing loss detection, and the impact of hearing loss on learning to read. 

Hearing Loss Can Slow Learning to Read, Says Prof. Gail Whitelaw_otter_aiDownload

What Do Spanish, Quechua, and DACA Have In Common? A Linguist Named Babel

by

Anna Babel, Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, spent 17 years gathering ethnographic data for her 2018 book, Language at the Border of the Andes and the Amazon. She discusses how language use creates similarities and differences among speakers of Spanish and Quechua with host David Staley. She then turns to a topic closer to home, her experience leading ally trainings for campus community members interested in supporting undocumented students.

What Do Spanish, Quechua, and DACA Have In Common? A Linguist Named Babel_otter_aiDownload

Trailblazing Female Dance Giants Get New Attention Thanks to Harmony Bench

by

Katherine Dunham and Anna Pavlova were remarkable for their eras, and Harmony Bench describes how they brought innovations to dance, not only in their on-stage work but in how they traveled the world.

Trailblazing Female Dance Giants Get New Attention Thanks to Harmony Bench_otter_aiDownload

Paloma Martinez-Cruz Seeks New Philosophers

by

Paloma Martinez-Cruz, Associate Professor of Latinx Cultural and Literary Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, joins David Staley to discuss decolonial feminism, Chicano/Latino studies, performance studies, and Mesoamerican culture. 

Paloma-Martinez-Cruz-Seeks-New-Philosophers_otter_aiDownload