Harmony Bench is an Associate Professor in the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University where she is also affiliated faculty with Theatre, Folklore, Translational Data Analytics, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. 
She is author of the open-access book Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common with University of Minnesota Press. From 2014-2019, she was co-editor of The International Journal of Screendance with Simon Ellis, and is now working on a special issue: “This Is Where We Dance Now: COVID-19 and the New and Next in Dance Onscreen.” Her writing has also appeared in The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies, Routledge Dance Studies Reader (3rd ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, Choreographies of 21st Century War, and Dance on Its Own Terms as well as Theatre Journal, The International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Performance Matters, among others. She is currently deep into a collaborative digital humanities project with dance and performance scholar Kate Elswit, Dunham’s Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry (Arts and Humanities Research Council Grant AH/R012989/1). This project brings data visualization and computational tools of analysis to bear on dance history in the study of mid-century African American choreographer Katherine Dunham. More information can be found at https://dunhamsdata.org/.
Yana Hashamova is Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Core Faculty of the Film Studies Program, Affiliate Faculty of the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme, Comparative Studies, Women’s Gender and 
Sexuality Studies, and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. She is the first international scholar to be named Honorary Research Associate at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Institute of Culture and Memory Studies). Dr. Hashamova is also editor of the Slavic and East European Journal, the publication of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. In her work, she strives to establish links between political ideology and constructs of national and gender identities in cultures, while analyzing post-Soviet conditions.
She has authored and edited several books as well as published over 30 articles and book chapters in the areas of Russian and Balkan film, media, and literature, all examining national, ethnic, and gender representations.
Advancing public dialogue surrounding the issues of migrants and refugees, her current project (a co-edited volume) explores the dynamic representations of the recent movement of people to, from, and through the Balkans.
For this project, comparing Russia’s COVID-19 mis-information campaigns with the ones surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 and their receptions, Yana Hashamova is working with her collaborator and PhD advisee, Maryam Bainazar. To learn more, watch “The Truth About Chernobyl 35 Years After the Disaster.”
Hannah Kosstrin is a dance historian whose work engages dance, Jewish, and gender studies, and modes of movement analysis. At The Ohio State University, she is Associate Professor in the Department of Dance and affiliate faculty with the Melton Center for Jewish 
Studies and the Center for Slavic and East European Studies. Her research and teaching interests include dance histories of the United States, Israel and the Jewish diaspora, Latin America, Europe, South Asia, and the African diaspora; gender and queer theory; nationalism and diaspora studies; Laban movement notation and analysis; and digital humanities. She is author of Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow (Oxford University Press, 2017), a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award Finalist. She is project director for the Labanotation iPad app KineScribe and Faculty Lead for the augmented reality dance scoring application LabanLens. For Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID, she is researching how the coronavirus pandemic affects reception to Jewish and Israeli choreographers’ work, and how these choreographers maintain mobility when stuck in place. This research is part of Kosstrin’s current book project, Kinesthetic Peoplehood: Choreographing Jewish Diaspora.
Danielle Schoon is a cultural anthropologist with expertise in Turkish, Roma, migration, and performance studies. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at OSU and has also taught classes in the departments of Sociology, Political Science, 
Anthropology, Comparative Studies, Dance, and French and Italian. Her research focuses on the intersections of identity politics and performance in Roma (“Gypsy”) communities in Turkey. Publication highlights include the anthology chapters “Between Global Solidarity and National Belonging: The Politics of Inclusion for Romanlar in Turkey” in Roma Activism: Reimagining Power and Knowledge (2018) and “The Art of Presence: Staging Roma Bodies in Istanbul” in
The Politics of Culture in Contemporary Turkey (2021), as well as the articles “‘Sulukule in the Gun and We are its Bullets’: Urban Renewal and Romani Identity in Istanbul” and “Istanbul Assemblages: Buildings and Bodies in a World City” in CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action. For Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID, she is collaborating with the Turkish Roma hip hop group, Tahribad-i Isyan (https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/turkey-tahribad-i-isyans-rap-rebellion), to present a virtual performance and discussion with OSU students, faculty, and the Columbus community. She is researching how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting Turkey’s Roma communities and local-global dynamics. Another of her collaborative projects, “Bringing the Border to Columbus” with Victor Espinosa (OSU Newark, Sociology), is also funded by a Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme faculty grant and includes the art exhibition Hostile Terrain 94 (https://www.undocumentedmigrationproject.org/hostileterrain94) and a symposium scheduled for Spring 2021.
Schoon frequently takes advantage of professional development opportunities to improve her teaching and is an advocate of active learning and community engagement. Her most recent collaborative project with Melinda McClimans (Middle East Studies Center) and Cindy Jiang (Office of International Affairs) is funded by a University Institute of Teaching and Learning Research Implementation Grant and brings together OSU undergraduates with university students in Istanbul to connect and collaborate virtually and to facilitate intercultural development.
Lyndsey Vader currently serves as the Event Coordinator for “Audiences and Online Reception: Before and After COVID.” She holds a Ph.D. in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University and an M.F.A. in Dance from The College at Brockport, State University of New York. Her research examines the use of 
audience participation in immersive performances that imagine new ways of being together during these politically divisive times. Vader has presented her research at national and regional conferences, with reoccurring participation in the Dance Studies Association annual conferences. Her writing has appeared in Dance Chronicle and was recently commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive essay series. Before pursuing her doctorate, Vader served as General Manager for Andrea Miller’s Gallim Dance (NY). From 2011-2014, she co-developed and managed its National Endowment for the Arts award-winning education and community programming. Additional administrative experiences include appointments with Moving on Center: School for Participatory Arts & Somatic Research and The Center for Kinesthetic Education under the direction of Dr. Martha Eddy, both in New York City.