Workshop in Cultural Affairs

Patricia A. Banks (Harvard University Ph.D. & A.M./Spelman College B.A.) is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Poetics and Professor of Sociology at Mount Holyoke College. Banks is the author of four books, including Black Culture Inc: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America (Stanford University Press 2022), Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption: A Sociological View (Routledge 2020), Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums (Routledge Research in Museum Studies 2019) and Represent: Art and Identity Among the Black Upper-Middle Class (Routledge 2010). Banks is Chair of the Section on the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption at the American Sociological Association and serves on the boards of Cultural Sociology, the Black Trustee Alliance and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. She has been in residence at Stanford University as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and at Harvard University as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. In 2023, Banks’ book Black Culture, Inc. received three national awards.

Felix Koenig is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. He received his Ph.D. and MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.

His research examines the drivers of economic inequality in the labor market. Dr. Koenig’s recent work studies the rise of winner-take-all labor markets in entertainment, where a few superstar workers earn most of the incomes. In this work, he explores how the roll-out of television contributed to the rise of such superstar markets. Other recent work studies how the widespread availability of home entertainment impacted long-term retirement patterns in the US and finds that more attractive and cheaply available entertainment options plaid a role in the landmark shifts towards earlier retirement in the US. Koenig also studies the job market prospects of workers hit by unemployment or disability spells and policies that help their job-finding.

His work has been awarded the “Best Paper Award” at the Junior Symposium of the Royal Economics Society and with the European Association of Labour Economist “Young Labor Economist” award. His work has been featured in major news outlets, including the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Economist. Koenig is a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) and the Center for Economic Performance (CEP).

As a professor, Dr. Michael Rushton’s expertise and teaching is in the economics, management, and public policy of the arts. His publications include articles on such topics as public funding for the arts, the role of nonprofit organizations, taxation, copyright, freedom of expression, and the arts and local development. He is the editor of Creative Communities: Art Works in Economic Development (2013) and the author of Strategic Pricing for the Arts (2014) and The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (2023).

Before joining Indiana University in 2006, he held faculty positions in Canada, the U.S., and Australia, and served as a senior policy advisor to the government of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. At Indiana University, he has served as Director of Strategic Planning, and Associate Vice President for University Academic Affairs.

Nicole S. Cohen is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology. She researches work and labour in media and cultural industries, and is author of Writers’ Rights: Freelance Journalism in a Digital Age (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).

Greig de Peuter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research explores the political economy of digital media and cultural production, with a focus on labour and collective organizing. His recent publications include “The Pandemic Politics of Cultural Work: Collective Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis,” with Kate Oakley and Madison Trusolino, in the International Journal of Cultural Policy (2023).

Cohen and de Peuter are co-authors of New Media Unions: Organizing Digital Journalists (Routledge, 2020). As part of the collaboration Cultural Workers Organize, they research collective responses to precarity and inequality in the cultural and tech sectors, including unionization drives, collective bargaining, worker-led policy reform, and co-op formation.

Giacomo Negro is professor of organization and management and sociology (by courtesy), and Associate Dean for Culture and Inclusion at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. His work focuses on understanding organizational processes related to diversity of products and behaviors in markets, with a particular focus on the creative industries. Recent publications include the book Wine Markets: Genres and Identities, for Columbia University Press.