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2024 MacArthur Fellow Ruha Benjamin to speak at UC

Renowned scholar, writer and educator Ruha Benjamin will visit the University of Cincinnati on March 7 to deliver the Taft Research Center’s annual keynote lecture. Benjamin is a sociologist and a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She also holds the position of the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, and is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and an award-winning author.
bowlina3@ucmail.uc.edu (Anne Bowling) | Mon, Feb 17, 2025

Renowned scholar, writer and educator Ruha Benjamin will visit the University of Cincinnati on March 7 to deliver the Taft Research Center’s annual keynote lecture.

Benjamin is a sociologist and a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She also holds the position of the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, and is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and an award-winning author.

Award-winning scholar and author Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University.

Award-winning scholar and author Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University. Photo/Provided

Benjamin’s lecture will explore the liberating power of imagination to address some of society's most pressing challenges. Amplifying the Taft Center's 2024-25 thematic programming on Worldbuilding and Radical Worldmaking, her keynote will examine how deadly systems shaped by the school-to-prison pipeline, ableism, digital surveillance, and eugenics emerged from the human imagination, and thus, can be remade through it.  

The keynote, co-sponsored with the College of Arts & Sciences, will highlight how educators, artists, technologists, and activists are experimenting with radical approaches that challenge the status quo to tackle seemingly intractable problems. Benjamin will showcase practices and ideas that aim to create more just, equitable, and sustainable futures, encouraging a collective effort to imagine and build worlds that work for everyone. 

Cover of Ruha Benjamin's most recent publication by W. W.. Norton (2025).

Cover of Ruha Benjamin's most recent publication by W. W.. Norton (2025). Image/Provided

An award-winning author, Benjamin's books include Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and her latest, Imagination: A Manifesto. Benjamin has received numerous honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and most recently the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship in 2024.

Book giveaways and upcoming events

The Taft Research Center will distribute 50 free copies of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want and Imagination: A Manifesto to attendees at the following events, while supplies last:

  • Black FUTURE Month Uncommon Read-In with Cassandra Jones 
    Mondays in February, 12:30–2 pm, Taft Research Center 
    Co-sponsored with the Department of Africana Studies
  • Feminist Forum x Viral Justice 
    February 21, 3:30–5 pm, 4614 French Hall West 
    Co-sponsored with the Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Featured image at top: Image of floating worlds. Credit/WikiImages from Pixabay.

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