Associate Professor, Department of Women’s & Gender Studies, Director, MU Center for the Humanities, elmanj@missouri.edu
Julie Passanante Elman is an associate professor of women’s and gender studies. She is also the founding director of the Center for the Humanities and the B.A. program in health humanities. Elman is the author of Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation (NYU Press, 2014), and her articles have appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. She is currently working on a second monograph, Capacity Feminism and Its Discontents. Her teaching excellence and commitment to community-building have been recognized with several university awards, including the Provost’s Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award, the Maxine Christopher Shutz Award and Lecture for Distinguished Teaching, and the Lee Henson Memorial Access Mizzou Award.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, MU College of Arts & Science, monniern@missouri.edu
Nicole Monnier is the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the MU College of Arts & Science. She has taught a range of courses, from elementary Russian to graduate seminars, and many others in between. A common thread through all of her courses is the intersection of literature, culture, and history; increasingly, they are also geared to promote undergraduate and graduate student career readiness, so that students graduate with demonstrable skills in critical thinking and problem-solving; oral and written communications; and intercultural fluency.

Her primary area of specialization is mid-19th century Russian prose and criticism. In recent years, she’s shifted her attention to the late end of the 19th century and the works of Anton Chekhov in particular.

Vice Provost for International Programs, International Center Director, setgmaierm@missouri.edu
Mary Stegmaier is an Associate Professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs and the Vice Provost for International Programs at the University of Missouri. Her research concentrates on elections and voting behavior in the U.S. and Europe, and has been published in a variety of political science journals including the British Journal of Political Science, East European Politics & Societies, Electoral Studies, Political Behavior, Politics & Policy, Public Choice, and the Annual Review of Political Science. She serves on several journal editorial boards, including the International Journal of Forecasting, Political Science Research and Methods, Electoral Studies, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, and Politics & Policy. In addition to publishing in peer-reviewed journals, her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, the Brookings Institution Blog, the Democratic Audit, and the London School of Economics Blogs.  Dr. Stegmaier has also served as an international election observer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Albania, Macedonia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan.

Professor and Chair, Department of Black Studies, Director, Peace Studies Program, dunkleyd@missouri.edu
Daive Dunkley is Professor and Chair in the MU Department of Black Studies, Director of Mizzou’s Peace Studies Program, and an affiliate faculty member at the Kinder Institute and in the Departments of History and Religious Studies. His research focuses on the history and culture of the Caribbean and the wider Black Atlantic, and he has authored publications exploring slave resistance, British colonialism, decolonization, and the politics of the Rastafari. He is the author, co-author, or editor of several books, including Readings in Caribbean History and Culture: Breaking Ground (2011), Agency of the Enslaved: Jamaica and the Culture of Freedom in the Atlantic World (2013), Leonard Percival Howell and the Genesis of the Rastafari (2015), and Black Resistance in the Americas (2019). Additionally, his book chapters and articles include “Enslaved Africans and the Transformation of Society in Brazil and the Caribbean: A View from the Churches,” published in the collection The African Heritage in Brazil and the Caribbean (2011), and “The Politics of Repatriation and the First Rastafari, 1932-1940,” published in Souls (2018). Prof. Dunkley has a strong desire to educate others about Black history and its implications for the present.

Ruth L. Hulston Professor of Law, Director, Michael A. Middleton Center for Race, Citizenship, and Justice, mitchellsd@missouri.edu
Professor S. David Mitchell is an interdisciplinary scholar, Director of the Michael A. Middleton Center for Race, Citizenship and Justice, and Ruth L. Hulston Professor of Law. He examines the criminal justice system using a sociological lens, specifically focusing on the collateral consequences of sentencing; ex-offender reentry and reintegration; and felon disenfranchisement. His other scholarship includes articles on zero-tolerance policies and the retroactive application of laws. He has served on numerous academic and public panels and been interviewed and quoted in a variety of news outlets.

He joined the University of Missouri School of Law faculty in 2006. Prior to joining the legal academy, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Andre M. Davis, formerly of the U.S. District Court, and as a Scholar in Residence in the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is an affiliate faculty member of the MU Black Studies and the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. He is also a member of the graduate faculty of the Sociology Department. He has served as the Chair of the University of Missouri System on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force and the University of Missouri Faculty Advisory Council for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

He is a member of the American Law Institute. He is a member of the Missouri State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, serving as Chair from 2016-2017, and has served as a Missouri Supreme Court Faculty Fellow. He has been recognized for his teaching and service as a recipient of the Gold Chalk Award; the Legion of Black Collegians Minority Faculty and Staff Appreciation Award; the 2014-2015 Lloyd L. Gaines Scholarship Banquet Honoree; the MU President’s Community Engagement Award; and the Missouri Lawyer’s Media Diversity and Inclusion Award. He was also recently inducted into the Rollins Society at the University of Missouri.

Associate Professor and Chair, Department of History, smaler@missouri.edu
Robert L. Smale is Associate Professor and Chair of History at MU. After earning B.A. degrees in History and Spanish at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, he went on to complete his M.A. and Ph.D. in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he specialized in the study of Latin America. His research focuses on the political and social history of South America’s Andean nations. He is the author of “I Sweat the Flavor of Tin”: Labor Activism in Early Twentieth-Century Bolivia (2010). He regularly teaches courses on the history of constitutional democracy in Latin America and the region’s revolutionary traditions.

Dean, MU School of Law, littonp@missouri.edu
Paul Litton was named permanent dean of Mizzou Law in May 2023 after serving as interim dean since July 2022. He joined the Mizzou faculty in 2006. He received a JD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied through the University’s Joint Program in Law and Philosophy, and was awarded the Lynn Lukens Moore Prize in Jurisprudence by the Law School. He was law clerk to Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz of the New Jersey Supreme Court, serving a second term as the Court’s death penalty law clerk. From 2004 to 2006, he was a fellow in the Department of Clinical Bioethics within the National Institutes of Health.

Dean Litton’s research primarily focuses on moral philosophy and criminal law theory, with a particular focus on the capacities required for agents to be fairly held morally and criminally responsible for their conduct. He also has published multiple papers in bioethics, with a focus on ethical issues for health care professionals outside the medical care context. His work appears in peer-reviewed journals across disciplines, as well as in traditional law reviews.

From 2010-12, Dean Litton co-chaired the Missouri Death Penalty Assessment Team, assembled by the American Bar Association to study and make recommendations regarding the laws and practices of Missouri’s capital system. The team included retired and active judges, former prosecutors and defense counsel, and academics with diverse views about the capital punishment. Its report, published in March 2012, can be found here.

Dean Litton has twice received the School of Law’s Shook Hardy & Bacon Award for Excellence in Research and has also been recognized for teaching, receiving the Gold Chalk Award from the University’s Graduate Professional Council and the Husch Blackwell Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching. Professor Litton teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Death Penalty Law, Jurisprudence, and Bioethics & Law.

From 2015 to 2022, Dean Litton served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the School of Law. He also was Director of the Office of Academic Integrity within the Office of the Provost from 2017 to 2022.

Director and Professor, Truman School of Government & Public Affairs, keiserl@missouri.edu
Dr. Lael Keiser is professor and director of the Harry S. Truman School of Government and Public Affairs. Her research and teaching focuses on the policy implementation and the administration of public programs. She serves on the editorial boards of Public Administration Review and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. Keiser received the Midwest Political Science Association’s Herbert Simon Award for significant contribution to the study of bureaucracy and the American Society for Public Administration’s Rita Mae Kelly Award for distinguished research on women’s issues. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration and an elected member of the Governing Board for the Public Management Research Association.

She has current research projects on representative bureaucracy, the automation of public service delivery, administrative burden, and policy implementation among street-level bureaucrats.

Dean, MU College of Arts & Science, drury@missouri.edu
Cooper Drury is the Dean of the College of Arts and Science and Professor in the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. He earned his BA and MA from Michigan State University and his PhD from Arizona State University.

His primary research and teaching interests focus on foreign policy. Specifically, he studies the causes, outcomes, and consequences of economic sanctions. Professor Drury has authored or co-authored two books, an award-winning textbook, and over two dozen articles and chapters. A committed teacher, Professor Drury has trained 25 doctoral students and has been awarded multiple teaching and mentorship awards. In his field, Professor Drury served as editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Analysis and as the 2016 International Studies Association program co-chair, and was awarded the Foreign Policy Analysis Distinguished Scholar Award, Quincy Wright Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Ladd Hollist Service Award.

At the University of Missouri, he has served as department chair, on the faculty council and intercampus faculty council, and led numerous campus and system-level committees.

Dean, MU Honors College, rymphc@missouri.edu
Before accepting the position as Dean of the Honors College, Dr. Catherine Rymph served as both the chair of the History Department and the interim chair of the Religious Studies Department. A dedicated and celebrated teacher, Dr. Rymph has taught and lectured in the Honors College and directed many honors theses since her arrival on MU’s campus in 2000. In 2018, she was awarded the Gold Chalk Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Dr. Rymph is the author of two books: Raising Government Children: A History of Foster Care and the American Welfare State (2017) and Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage to the Rise of the New Right (2006). Her research and teaching interests concern women and American politics, public policy, and child welfare, and she is an affiliate faculty member of both the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and the Kinder Institute. Before coming to MU, Catherine Rymph taught at the University of Iowa and as Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Greifswald in Germany.