Ohio Humanities Project
Documenting and engaging with public attitudes toward the arts and humanities
Supported by the Humanities Institute and the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University alongside the Ohio Humanities Alliance, the Ohio Humanities Project documents and engages with public attitudes toward the arts and humanities throughout Ohio.
The project utilizes community cultural events and conversations involving Ohio community members, Ohio State humanities faculty, and university leaders to foster constructive dialogue and engage with the oral histories of Ohio's many varied communities. It is a multi-year project designed to recommend actions for increasing trust between the university and statewide constituencies and building productive curriculum, programming, and institutional structures.
Who We Are
Ryan Skinner is a musical anthropologist who studies the expressive cultures and social worlds of contemporary Africa and its European diaspora, with extensive fieldwork conducted in Mali and Sweden. Specializing in the analytic and interpretive methods of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, Skinner’s research focuses on issues of popular culture, ethics and aesthetics, public piety, cultural policy, intellectual property, racial identity and politics, and new social movements in the African world.
Morgan Y. Liu is a cultural anthropologist studying the globalization of economic elites in Central Asia, Muslims in former Communist countries, informal social networks as formations of power in Central Asian societies, emergent complexity of interactions between corporation/state/and non-state actors, urban space, and Islamic ideas of social justice. His broadest interests concern how Central Asians make sense of and act on their society’s structural problems. This includes turning an ethnographic lens onto the connections between Central Asia, Turkey, Russia, and China.
Nick Booker is the Archivist Folklore Archives at the Center for Folklore Studies and a staff researcher for the Ohio Humanities Project. His research interests include postnational and transnational musical identities, tradition, heritage, commodification, and globalization in the context of North American, British, Irish, Celtic, and Gaelic musical communities. He is focused on interactions between folk and traditional music communities in the Great Lakes region of North America and Cornwall in southwest Britain.
There is growing recognition that Ohio lacks systematic, statewide data on how residents understand, value, and engage with the humanities. At the same time, humanities work is thriving across the state, at colleges and universities, and through libraries, museums, historical societies, schools, and community arts organizations. Yet little substantive evidence exists regarding how Ohioans experience these activities, what they value about them, and how humanities organizations, educators, and community leaders might better support them.
The Ohio Humanities Project implements a sustained, multi-phase, and multidisciplinary program that will position Ohio as a national leader in documenting, assessing, and strengthening public engagement with the humanities. Led through a partnership among the Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR), the Humanities Institute, and the Ohio Humanities Alliance, the project combines statewide survey research with community dialogue, public engagement, and program development.
The moment is timely. Across Ohio and the nation, communities are navigating social, cultural, economic, and technological change, including uncertainties surrounding the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence. At the same time, colleges, universities, and humanities organizations are seeking new ways to demonstrate and strengthen the civic, cultural, educational, and economic contributions of the humanities. A statewide humanities initiative offers an opportunity not only to better understand public perceptions of humanistic learning and practice, but also to identify areas of shared concern, common purpose, and future collaboration among educational institutions, cultural organizations, and local communities.
By bringing together humanities scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, experts in public survey development and statistical analysis, statewide humanities organizations, and community partners across the state, this project aims to:
- Iteratively poll on an annual basis thousands of Ohioans from diverse geographic, demographic, and professional backgrounds regarding their understanding of, engagement with, and perceptions of the humanities.
- Organize targeted meetings, town halls, public roundtables, and community conversations throughout Ohio that foster dialogue and mutual learning among community members, humanities practitioners, educators, and researchers.
- Assess, interpret, engage, and apply findings from both survey data and community dialogues in collaboration with statewide partners (schools, libraries, museums, arts groups, historical societies, and other stakeholders). The goal is to strengthen relationships among colleges, universities, community organizations, and the constituencies they serve, while informing future programming, educational initiatives, and public humanities investments.
Please reach out to our researchers or contact the Humanities Institute for more information on our work.