Urbana Campus Research Calendar (OVCRI)
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Friday, September 25, 2026
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Friday Forum & Conversation Cafe: BENIVENIDOS: The Works and Murals of Jose Vazquez September 25 | 12pm - 1pm | University YMCA, 1001 S Wright St, Champaign

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Lynn Vavreck (UCLA) will explore why American politics can feel so difficult to change and what decades of survey evidence can tell us about what has shifted, what has stayed the same, and Americans’ views of the American Dream.

Saturday, September 26, 2026
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For more than two decades, Emmy-nominated and award-winning animation and documentary director, author, and illustrator Jeff Chiba Stearns has used visual storytelling to explore the intersections of Japanese Canadian history, mixed-race identity, family, and culture. Jeff will reflect on using animation, illustration, comics, and film to make history accessible.

Monday, September 28, 2026
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Thursday, October 1, 2026
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Lunch talk "Sexual Harassment and the Geography of Service Work in the US" will offer hybrid format with in-person in room 306 Coble Hall and via Zoom. Lunch provided with registration. This presentation, which is pulled from the opening chapter of working manuscript, Hands Off: A History of Fighting Back against Sexual Harassment in the American Workplace.

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Since the last time we discussed the AI related copyright lawsuits, a few more cases have been decided by district courts. We will conduct an overview on these recent developments, and see if we can identify some trends.

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MillerComm Lecture: Occupying America: War and the Infrastructure of US Power in a Globalizing World
Join us for a lecture by Justin Jackson titled "Occupying America: War and the Infrastructure of US Power in a Globalizing World."

Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Thursday, October 8, 2026
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CSGGE Lunch Series, "Gender Equity in an Inequitable Era" will host Shaimaa Khanam, Graduate Student in the Department of Communication. Her talk, "Audiences interpretations of gender problems based on Netflix show, Adolescence”, will take place on October 8th at 12pm in person at 306 Coble Hall and virtually. Lunch provided for in-person attendees.

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This inaugural event by the Borders of Sanctuary Working Collective presents a public facing panel that pairs Professor Willie Mack (Black Studies, University of Missouri) on Black migration with Devin Lowe from the Black Trans Travel Fund, which serves Black and Transgender migrants.

Friday, October 9, 2026
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Friday Forum & Conversation Cafe: Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence October 9 | 12pm - 1pm | University YMCA, 1001 S Wright St, Champaign

Tuesday, October 13, 2026
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Join us for a conversation with current and former students who have taken active roles in community-engaged research and leadership. Three students/alums will be joined by their faculty mentors. Presented by the Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity and the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute, this session will be facilitated by Dr. Kevin Tan (Social Work).

Thursday, October 15, 2026
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Dr. Tingting Zhang, School of Labor and Employment Relations gives lunch talk, "Pushed out and Boxed In: Gendered Silence and Exit Orientation in China's Tech Industry" on Thursday, October 15th. She argues that silence in such environment is not a uniform response to constrained institutional conditions, but it shaped by the gendered social positions workers occupy.

Friday, October 16, 2026
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This presentation will introduce NautilIA, an interactive generative-AI roleplay game build through Google AI Studio designed to support French language learning through immersive, voice-based interaction. The presentation will first showcase the platform and its main features, then discuss how NautilIA was integrated into a French as a Foreign Language course.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Friday, October 23, 2026
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Friday Forum & Conversation Cafe: Beautiful Struggle: How One American High School Took on Systemic Racism October 23 | 12pm - 1pm | University YMCA, 1001 S Wright St, Champaign

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Dr. Cromley will present on two studies comparing writing with Word vs. ChatGPT. Data were collected on during-reading and during-writing processes, essay scores, and learning posttests. The results of these studies will be presented and examined with a critical eye.

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MillerComm Lecture: Islam in France: Minority Religion, Laïcité, and the Politics of Muslim Identity
Join us for a lecture by George A Miller Visiting Scholar Youssouf T. Sangaré titled "Islam in France: Minority Religion, Laïcité, and the Politics of Muslim Identity."

Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Thursday, October 29, 2026
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CSGGE Lunch Series, "Gender Equity in an Inequitable Era" will host Yeaseul Hur is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her talk, "When Women Are Ideal Workers: The Gendered Impact of Overwork on Wages and Promotion”, will take place on October 29th at 12pm in person at 306 Coble Hall and virtual.

Friday, October 30, 2026
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Join us for a lecture by George A. Miller Visiting Scholar Youssouf Sangaré. His talk examines the case of Chérif Ousmane Madani Haïdara and the Ançar Dine movement in Mali as a window into the dynamics of contemporary African Islam.

Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Wednesday, November 4, 2026
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Bruce J. Tromberg, the director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health, will give the Beckman-Brown Lecture on Interdisciplinary Science at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, in the auditorium of the Beckman Institute.

Thursday, November 5, 2026
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Join us for a lecture by Laura Chávez-Moreno, an associate professor of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and Education at the University of California Los Angeles about her book "How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America"

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Translators who translate from their “first” language and into their acquired tongue have been marginalized. This talk aims to build on the work of Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour, Adrian Wanner, and others in looking at several Polish and Polish-American poets for whom literary multilingualism and translation are two sides of the same coin.

Friday, November 6, 2026
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Thursday, November 12, 2026
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Our November lecture will be on Thursday, November 12 from 12pm-1pm with Dr. Mary Caruso Dailey. Dr. Dailey earned her PhD in Chemistry in 2010 and is currently a Lead Product Development Specialist for 3M. She will discuss her research on adhesives for electronics bonding and experiences as a graduate student in Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

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This event will highlight the collaborative project involving Emblematica (U of I), a digital library of emblem books, and Compositor (U of Birmingham), a database of printers’ ornaments. Dr. Hazel Wilkinson hypothesizes that “emblem-literacy” caused historical readers to engage with ornamented books in ways previously unaccounted-for in scholarship.

Friday, November 13, 2026
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This presentation provides an overview of how AI is influencing work, employment, HRM, and labor relations. It considers emerging opportunities and challenges for workers and organizations, with attention to changing job tasks, employment practices, workplace governance, and the evolving relationship between technology and work.

Tuesday, November 17, 2026
Thursday, November 19, 2026
Thursday, December 3, 2026
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In this presentation prof. Agate will share how the assignments in RST 460 are structured and the reasoning behind the design, and will also share some preliminary data about students’ experience with the AI integration into the event planning process: what they are finding useful, confusing, or surprising.

Thursday, March 4, 2027
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Jonna Perrillo, education historian and professor of English education at the University of Texas at El Paso, will deliver the 2027 Gryphon Lecture hosted by the Center for Children's Books in the School of Information Sciences. She will present "School Book Lists and the Civic Education of U.S. Teens: from 1950 to Texas."












