Professor Fennell's research follows the transformation of the U.S. welfare state and its effects on the politics of citizenship, race and urban redevelopment in Chicago, and more broadly, the American Rust Belt. Her recent and forthcoming publications examine materiality and ethical compulsion in the context of Chicago’s public housing reforms.

Dr. Long's research interests include the history of ecology and topics in biology and biomedicine in the twentieth century. She has investigated urban ecology and public health, mid-twentieth century science and population, and biochemical and enzyme research and the biological sciences at Johns Hopkins. She is now at work on a book on the study of stress in the years surrounding World War II.

Ryan Skinner is an ethnomusicologist who studies expressive culture in West Africa and its European and American diasporas, with an areal focus on Malian music. Specializing in the analytic methods of cultural anthropology, social history, and musicology, Skinner’s research examines issues of popular and public culture, morality and ethics, cultural politics and economies, urbanism, and globalization.