The Workshop in Cultural Affairs series advances the Center for Cultural Affairs’ priorities around training, research, and field-building. These biweekly workshops will highlight researchers at the O'Neill School, the greater Indiana University community, and beyond. The workshop connects cultural affairs experts together in a forum for scholarly discussion, debate, and exploration of the important issues being faced in the field of cultural affairs.
Workshop in Cultural Affairs
Johanna Taylor, Arizona State University
January 25, 12pm EST
Topic: "The Future of Artists and Government: A Research Overview"
Johanna K. Taylor is an Assistant Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her work exploring the intersection of art, community, policy, and place has been published in City, Culture and Society, Cultural Trends, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, among other journals as well as in her book TheArt Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). She is co-founder of CAIR Lab, an applied creative research collective, and prior to turning to academia she spent over a decade working as an arts administrator.
Wen Guo, Elon University
February 8, 12pm EST
Topic: "Institutional entrepreneurship through network governance: a social network analysis of NEA's creative placemaking national initiative"
Wen Guo is an Assistant Professor of Arts Administration in the Department of Art at Elon University, NC. She received her doctoral degree in Cultural Policy and Arts Administration from Ohio State University. She studies a broad array of topics in arts administration and cultural policy, including arts policy networks, career development in the arts, and community engagement of arts organizations, teaching & learning in arts administration. Her scholarly articles are published in Cultural Trends, Review of Policy Research, the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, Studies in Art Education, Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, the American Journal of Arts Management, and more. She currently serves as an editorial board member of the American Journal of Arts Management and a board member of the International Conference of Social Theory, Politics and the Arts.
Laurence Dubuc, MassCulture
February 22, 12pm EST
Topic: "Community-engaged Research Strategies for Creativity and Sustainability in the Arts Sector and Beyond: Opportunities and Challenges"
Laurence D. Dubuc is a Mitacs postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media of the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC). Her work focuses on the challenges and potential of community-engaged research strategies in different sectors and organizational settings. It does so by looking at two cases: Mass Culture and the Urban Just Transitions (UJT) cluster of scholarly prominence. For her SSHRC, FRQSC and CRIMT-funded PhD, Dubuc studied the precarity of visual arts labour in Montreal (QC), and various strategies dedicated to better work and sustainable futures in the artist-run centres network. She has been working as a consultant in the Canadian arts sector for several years, in addition to her community work in academia and beyond.
Jennifer Novak-Leonard, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
March 8, 12pm EST
Topic: "Considering Cultural Integration in the United States"
Novak-Leonard has also led numerous applied research efforts, including those funded by the National Endowment for the Arts; The James Irvine Foundation; the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, among others. Recently, she led the redesign of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Her scholarly publications span research on the public perceptions of artists; public funding; arts as a means of immigrant integration; and measuring the intrinsic impacts of arts experiences. From 2016-2020, Novak-Leonard was the Principal Investigator of one of the four inaugural National Endowment for the Arts’ Research Labs. She serves as the Board Vice President and Research Director for the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) and on the editorial advisory boards of Cultural Trends, Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, and The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society.
Prior to joining the University of Illinois, Novak-Leonard served as a director of graduate study at Northwestern University. She has served as the Associate Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, and has held appointments at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) and the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago. Previously, Jennifer was a Senior Consultant at WolfBrown.
Ken Elpus, University of Maryland
March 22, 12pm EDT
Topic: "Antecedents and Consequents of K-12 Music & Arts Education in America"
Kenneth Elpus is Professor of Music Education and Associate Director of the School of Music at the University of Maryland, College Park. At UMD, he prepares undergraduates to teach choral music in secondary schools, teaches graduate research methods and vocal pedagogy, and conducts the University Treble Choir. In his administrative role as Associate Director for Faculty Affairs and Graduate Studies, he serves on the School’s administrative team, oversees the university’s performance and academic graduate programs in music, and helps advance the work and careers of the School of Music faculty.
In addition to his teaching and administrative duties, Dr. Elpus pursues an active research agenda as principal investigator of the Music & Arts Education Data Lab (https://madlab.umd.edu), the University of Maryland’s National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab. The lab is focused on using large datasets to answer questions related to music and arts education as a vital component of 21st century schooling. Dr. Elpus’s research centers on three main areas: issues of demography and representation in music and arts education, the status of arts education in education policy and the effects of education policies on arts education, and the social and academic consequents of arts education for K-12 students. This work is published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, Arts Education Policy Review, and the international journals Music Education Research and Psychology of Music. He coauthored, with Peter Miksza, the book Design and Analysis of Research in Music Education, published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Elpus has served on the editorial committees of the Journal of Research in Music Education and the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education and is the incoming editor-in-chief of Arts Education Policy Review.
In addition to funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab program, Dr. Elpus’s research has also been supported in part by grants from the NEA’s Research Grants in the Arts program, the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, and the International Baccalaureate Organization.
Diane Ragsdale and Shannon Litzenberger, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
April 5, 12pm EDT
Topic: "Cultivating Capacities for Co-Creation Across Difference: Or, What Does Pluralism Require of Us?"
Diane Ragsdale (MFA) is a speaker, writer, lecturer, and advisor on a range of arts and culture topics. She is currently director and faculty for a new MA in Creative Leadership at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and adjunct faculty for Yale University’s Theater Management program. She previously built an MA at The New School; was a lecturer at Erasmus University in Rotterdam; oversaw theater and dance grantmaking at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and led two cultural institutions through turnaround. She authors the blog, Jumper, on ArtsJournal.com.
Shannon Litzenberger (MA) is an award-winning dance artist and cultural leader working at the intersection of art, ideas and transformational change. The embodied co-creative practices she works with in studio are central to her work in leadership development, organizational culture change, and public policy. She works across corporate, academic and social benefit spaces, with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Ivey Business School at Western University, University of Toronto, Metcalf Foundation, Trudeau Foundation, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Canadian Arts Summit, among others. www.shannonlitzenberger.com
James Pawelski and Katherine Cotter, University of Pennsylvania
April 19, 12pm EDT
Topic: "Art Museums for Well-Being: A research initiative in the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project"
Katherine N. Cotter is the Associate Director of Research with the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project at the University of Pennsylvania. Within the project, she leads the "Art Museums for Well-Being” initiative, examining the ways in which engaging with visual art–both in the museum and virtually–can enhance flourishing. In this work, she emphasizes people’s interactions with the arts in their own life using daily life methods and in cultural institutions people visit to engage with the arts, such as art museums. Katherine earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
James O. Pawelski, Ph.D., is professor of practice and director of education in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as adjunct professor of Religious Studies. Having won a Fulbright Scholarship and earned a doctorate in philosophy, he is the founding director of the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project, which has been designated a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of five books, including The Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities, and is the editor of the Humanities and Human Flourishing book series with Oxford University Press. He is an award-winning teacher, the founding director of Penn’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology Program, the founding executive director of the International Positive Psychology Association, a member of the executive committee of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, and has served on the Steering Committee of the International Positive Education Network and as President of the William James Society.
Amy Whitaker, New York University
October 5, 12pm EDT
Topic: "The True Value of Art"
Amy Whitaker is an Associate Professor at New York University in the Steinhardt School’s department of art and art professions. She teaches business to artists, art to businesspeople, and economics to arts managers. She started her career in art museums including the Guggenheim, MoMA, and Tate. Although she is known for working across art and business, her original background is in political science, which she studied at Williams College. She also holds a PhD in political economy, an MFA in painting, and an MBA. Amy is the author of three books: Museum Legs (Hol Art Books), Art Thinking (HarperCollins), and Economics of Visual Art: Market Practice and Market Resistance (Cambridge). Her work has received the Sarah Verdone Award for writing, the Edith Penrose Award for “trailblazing” research, and the Axiom Silver Medal for best business book of the year. Her newest book, The Story of NFTs: Art, Technology, and Democracy, co-authored with Nora Burnett Abrams, will be published by Rizzoli in February 2023. Her academic articles have appeared in Management Science, Journal of Cultural Economics, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Journal of Arts Management, Law & Society, and Review of Research in Education, among others. Her research has been cited widely including in The Atlantic, Harpers, The Guardian, Financial Times, Time, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Art Newspaper. One of the earliest blockchain researchers in the arts, she wrote the section “NFTs and the Art Market” for Art Basel’s The Art Market 2022 report. Amy has spoken widely including at the Aspen Ideas Festival, TEDx, Unfinished Live, and universities nationally and internationally. A longtime teacher and advisor, she has served as a mentor to TED Fellows, New Museum Incubator members, and Joan Mitchell Foundation grantees.
Eleonora Redaelli, University of Oregon
October 19, 12pm EDT
Topic: "Unveiling cultural policy mechanisms"
Eleonora Redaelli specializes in American cultural policy, with a focus on the arts, humanities, and historic preservation. She joined University of Oregon in 2013. She has been visiting professor at several institutions such as American University (Rome), Shandong University (Jinan, China), University of International Business and Economics (Beijin) and visiting scholar at Tshwane University of Technology (Pretoria, South Africa), University of Ottawa (Canada) and Politecnico di Milano (Italy).
Eleonora earned her PhD at The Ohio State University in 2008. Prior she worked in the cultural sector in Italy, first, for a public agency and, later on, for a private foundation. After completing her PhD, she coordinated and taught in the arts management program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Her research has been published in renown journals such as International Journal of the Arts in Society, City, Culture and Society, Urban Affairs Review, Cultural Trends, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Policy Studies, Urban Geography,Journal of General Education,Journal of American Planning, Journal of Urban Affairs and Cities. She has published two books with Palgrave: “Arts Management and Cultural Policy Research” (2015), co-authored with Jonathan Paquette, and “Connecting Arts and Place. Cultural Policy and American Cities” (2019). In 2019, she received the UO Faculty Excellence Award.
Mark Taylor, University of Sheffield
November 2, 12pm EDT
Topic: "Who runs the arts in England? Networks and geographies of boards of directors"
Mark Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Visiting Scholar at Deakin University, Australia. His research interests are in the sociology of culture and its relationship to inequality, as well as in quantitative methods, particularly data visualisation. With Orian Brook and Dave O'Brien, he is the author of Culture is Bad For You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries. More recently, he has been working on arts governance in England, and on diversity in the UK games industry.
Kate Preston Keeney, College of Charleston
November 16, 12pm EST
Topic: "The Lasting Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Roles of State Arts Agencies"
Kate Keeney is Associate Professor and Program Director of Arts Management at the College of Charleston. Her research interests bridge arts management and nonprofit management scholarship with a specific focus on cultural policy, leadership, and organizations. She serves as a consulting editor for the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, and as First Vice President for the South Carolina Arts Alliance. Additionally, she has completed research on local arts initiatives with the Riley Center for Livable Communities at the College of Charleston. Previously, Keeney managed several high-level, university-wide initiatives at Virginia Tech, including the construction of the $100 million Moss Arts Center. She has held professional positions at the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Americans for the Arts, the Cathedral Choral Society, and the New York Philharmonic.
Workshop Alums
Amanda J. Ashley, Boise State University
Jennifer Benoit-Bryan, Slover Linett Audience Research
Jakob Brounstein, University of California, Berkeley
Bronwyn Coate, RMIT University
Susan Dumais, Lehman College
Tal Feder, Sapir College
Alexandre Frenette, Vanderbilt University
Carl Grodach, Monash University
Steven Hadley, National University of Ireland Galway
Mirae Kim, George Mason University
Brian Kisida, University of Missouri
Carolyn Loh, Wayne State University
Lénia Marques, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Candace Miller, University of North Carolina
Alisa Moldavanova, Wayne State University
Doug Noonan, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Susan Oman, University of Sheffield
Jonathan Paquette, University of Ottawa
Michael Rushton, Indiana University
Michael Seman, Colorado State University
Rachel Skaggs, Ohio State University
Tamás Szabados, Eötvös Loránd University
Neville Vakharia, Drexel University
Qingfang Wang, University of California Riverside
Hannah Wohl, University of California, Santa Barbara
Joanna Woronkowicz, Indiana University
Artwork credit: Banner image by photographer, James Brosher.
