People: Research Faculty

D. Carroll Joynes is co-founder and Executive Director of the Cultural Policy Center. He comes to cultural policy from the humanities, having previously served as Associate Dean in the Humanities Division at The University of Chicago. Holding a Ph.D. in European history from The University of Chicago, he has taught at The University of Chicago and at the New School for Social Research. Providing the strategic planning that guides the Center’s vision, activities and fund raising, Joynes is liaison to the Harris Graduate School governing board, university administration and foundation officers. Joynes is deeply involved in Chicago’s art and philanthropic communities and is the board president of Chicago Opera Theater and a board member of the Newbury Library.

Lawrence Rothfield is co-founder and Faculty Director of the Cultural Policy Center, and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He co-founded the Cultural Policy Center with Joynes after serving as director and co-founder of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. His major publications include Vital Signs, a book about the social function of the 19 th-century novel; The Measure of Man, a forthcoming study of the politics of culture in the Florentine Renaissance; and a volume of edited essays on the Brooklyn Museum controversy, Unsettling "Sensation": Arts Policy Lessons from the Brooklyn Museum of Art Controversy. Rothfield co-designed and co-taught “Introduction to Cultural Policy” with economist Don Coursey in 2000. His most recent publication is a chapter on state-level humanities policy in the volume Mapping State Cultural Policy edited by J. Mark Schuster. Rothfield has also taught cultural policy including both the Center's introduction to cultural policy studies and courses on the politics of culture and of taste. He is currently overseeing a major new project on the impact of cultural "scenes" on regional urban development. As faculty director, he is responsible for the research and teaching agenda of the Center.

Diane Grams, Research Associate at the Cultural Policy Center, has studied the cultural sector, particularly that in Chicago, for the past two decades, and is currently working on art networks in low-income and minority neighborhoods. In addition to her scholarly work, she has consulted with both non-profit organizations and foundations. Holding a Ph.D. in sociology from Loyola University, Chicago, Grams co-authored Leveraging Assets: How Small Budget Arts Activities Benefit Neighborhoods, a 2003 study funded by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Her research focuses on cultural organizations and art production networks, particularly those found in low-income and minority communities. Since 1998, she has worked as an independent consultant for foundations and non-profit organizations doing research, program evaluation, and fundraising. She was a principal investigator for Leveraging Assets: How Small Budget Arts Activities Benefit Neighborhoods, a 2003 report funded by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and was co-author of ArtsAlive: The 2001 Report on the State of Arts Education in Michigan for Art Serve Michigan and the Michigan Board of Education. A founding board member of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, Grams was executive director of The Peace Museum, Chicago, 1992-1998.

Danielle Allen is Dean of the Division of Humanities and Professor of Classics, Political Science and the Committee of Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Allen holds a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. Affiliated with the University of Chicago since 1997, she is the author of The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (2000) and Talking to Strangers: anxieties of citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (2004), as well as numerous articles on topics ranging from ancient poetry to Plato to bees to Ralph Ellison and September 11th. Allen is a 2001 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Robert J. LaLonde is a professor in the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and principal investigator on “Mapping African American and Hispanic Participation in Chicago Cultural Institutions,” a Cultural Policy Center study funded by the Joyce Foundation involving GIS mapping of census data with participant addresses from 14 of Chicago’s cultural institutions. LaLonde first joined the University of Chicago in 1985, where he taught for 10 years at the Graduate School of Business and the Harris School . From 1995 to 1998, LaLonde served as an associate professor of economics at Michigan State University . He has been research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1986, served as a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the 1987-88 academic years, and was the Deputy Director of the Northwestern/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. Holding a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University , his research focuses on five areas: program evaluation; education and training of the work force; economic impacts of immigration on developed countries; the costs of worker displacement; and the impact of unions and collective bargaining in the United States .

David Karraker , an independent consultant and researcher with the Cultural Policy Center , provides program design, program evaluation, and strategic planning support to government agencies, foundations, universities and nonprofit organizations. For 16 years, he was a research associate at the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service, retiring in December 2000. He participated in the Center’s comprehensive study funded by the Pew Charitable Trust examining cultural policy of Washington state. He has facilitated the development of a multiyear organizational plan for Chicago Opera Theater; in association with arts consultant Craig Dreeszen, guided the Mississippi Arts Commission in the formulation of its comprehensive 2003-2008 strategic plan; and provided board development, organizational and strategic planning support and program evaluation training to a range of nonprofit organizations in Greater Portland and Southern Maine. As a Muskie School Research Associate, he directed a project team that conducted more than 300 comprehensive organizational assessments of arts groups seeking participation in the National Endowment for the Arts’ Advancement Program, and directed a national program study of the Endowment’s ‘Locals’ test program. He also has conducted a number of studies within the child and family policy arena for both government agencies and private nonprofits. His novel, Running in Place, was published in 2003, and he is co-author of a musical play, The Magnolia Club, which opened the first season of Chicago’s Victory Garden’s theater. His short fiction has appeared in South Carolina Review and Puerto Del Sol, the literary journal of New Mexico State University.

Colm A. O'Muircheartaigh, Professor in the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, is also Vice President of Statistics and Methodology as the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) specializing in focus groups. Hisresearch encompasses survey sample design, measurement errors in surveys, cognitive aspects of question wording, and latent variable models for non-response. He has served as a consultant to a wide range of public and commercial organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and elsewhere. He has published widely on issues in survey methodology, most recently in Public Opinion Quarterly, the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, the Journal of Official Statistics, and Quality and Quantity. He joined NORC and the University of Chicago from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is co-investigator for the Joyce Foundation’s grant “Mapping African American and Hispanic Participation in Chicago Cultural Institutions.”

Margaret J. Wyszomirski is Director of the graduate Arts Policy and Administration Program at the Ohio State University, where she holds faculty appointments in both the Department of Art Education and the School of Public Policy and Management.  Holding a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University, she is former Director of the Graduate Program in Public Policy at Georgetown University.  Her government service has included positions as Staff Director of the Bipartisan Independent Commission on the National Endowment for the Arts and NEA Director of the Office of Policy Planning, Research and Budget.  She has published extensively on the subjects of art, culture and public policy as well as on the presidency and has served on the editorial board of half a dozen journals including Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society; Policy Studies Journal and Governance. She has been a contributor to many collaborative projects, including developing case studies in public entrepreneurship that resulted in "The Politics of Art: Nancy Hanks and the National Endowment for the Arts" in Leadership and Innovation edited by Jameson Doig and Erwin Hargrove (1987); the US case study for Comparing Cultural Policy (1999); an arts-focused assessment in Measuring the Impact of the Nonprofit Sector on Society (2002); and the arts and culture subsector survey chapter in The State of the Nonprofit Sector edited by Lester Salamon (2002).  Recently her research has turned to mapping aspects of the cultural sector and to international topics in cultural policy.  She also has served on various project and institutional advisory committees, including three American Assemblies, the Center for Arts and Culture, the Ohio Arts Council, the cultural data archive CPANDA, and the Urban Institute/Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy.

Past Visiting Scholars >>

Our Staff

Our Research Assistants

Our Faculty Steering Committee