UC's Charles Phelps Taft Research Center taps new director

Sadre-Orafai also serves as director of undergraduate studies in anthropology and co-director of the Critical Visions Certificate Program with the university. As director at Taft, she succeeds Amy Lind, professor in the School of Public and International Affairs and faculty affiliate of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Sadre-Orafai is a sociocultural anthropologist whose ethnographic work examines media and cultural producers, emerging forms of expertise, the intersection of race, language, and visual practices in aesthetic industries, and forms of evidence and the body. She studied anthropology throughout her academic career, earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley and her master’s and doctoral degrees from New York University. She joined the UC faculty in 2010.

Having been active within the Taft community throughout her time at UC, Dr. Sadre-Orafai is no stranger to the center. Her involvement has included membership on the executive Taft faculty board, assisting with the review of grant proposals, organizing and attending numerous Taft-sponsored events and lectures, participating in Taft research groups, and serving as the 2023-26 Taft Professor of Social Justice.

During her 2024-2029 term as director, Sadre-Orafai hopes to accomplish three broad goals: establish regular rhythms for center life with craft and method talks, multimodal thematic programming and Taft-sponsored unit-led events; support cohort and community building within, across, and beyond Taft member units, emphasizing annual center theming and cross-college graduate fellows; and enhance existing structures to increase both internal and external transparency and impact. Her familiarity with the Taft Center and its mission to support excellence in and the advancement of the humanities has made her well prepared to set and tackle these ambitious goals.

The Taft mission started in 1930 with a $2,000,000 endowment made by Annie Sinton Taft in honor of her late husband Charles Phelps Taft, with a goal to “bring about a concentration of interest upon that group of ideas which are generally known as 'The Humanities,' hoping others may be inspired to join in the same work or other work of the University.”

The Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund awarded monies from the endowment to eligible UC faculty and students through 2005, when Taft officially became an institution with a physical presence as the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.

Members of the Taft family continue to serve as trustees of the endowment, ensuring long term security over the fund. Today, the Taft Research Center offers funding for undergraduate, graduate and faculty scholarship in 15 humanities and social science departments at the University of Cincinnati main campus.

Featured image at top: Aerial view of UC's Uptown campus. Photo/Provided.