Professor Lowrie’s research focuses on how Latin literature thinks about politics, particularly the ways political thought emerges from a text’s formal elements and figurative expression short of abstract conceptualization. She has published Horace’s Narrative Odes and Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome, both from Oxford University Press. Edited volumes include Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Horace’s Odes and Epodes and, together with Susanne Lüdemann, Exemplarity and Singularity: Thinking through Particulars in Philosophy, Literature, and Law, with Routledge. Current research focuses on civil war and security, both Roman concepts with long histories. A frequent visitor to the Center for Advanced Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, she has also held residential fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Warburg-Haus in Hamburg, the Research Center “Cultural Theory and Theory of the Political Imaginary” in Konstanz, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Institute of Advanced Study in Durham, England. She has received a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, as well as fellowships from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Lowrie gave the Gray Lectures at Cambridge in 2018. Her BA is from Yale and PhD from Harvard.

Richard Neer is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College at the University of Chicago. From 2010 to 2018 he was the Executive Editor of Critical Inquiry, where he continues to serve as Co-Editor. He works at the intersection of aesthetics, archaeology and the history of art in multiple fields: Classical Greek sculpture, early modern French painting, theories of style, and mid-20th century cinema. His Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley (1998), his A.B. from Harvard College (1991). He has received fellowships and awards from the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the American Academy in Rome. His most recent books are Pindar, Song and Space: Toward a Lyric Archaeology, co-authored with Leslie Kurke of UC Berkeley (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), winner of a 2019 PROSE award from the Association of American Publishers; an edited volume, Conditions of Visibility, (Oxford University Press, 2019); the second edition of Art and Archaeology of the Greek World: A New History, 2500–100 BCE (Thames & Hudson, 2018); and Davidson and His Interlocutors, a special issue of Critical Inquiry co-edited with Daniele Lorenzini (Winter 2019).  His next book, Painting as a Way of Life, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.

Neer is a member of the international advisory board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and the National Committee for the History of Art.

The Franke Institute is a site for invention in Humanities, an interdisciplinary crossroads for people, ideas, and disciplines to mix. Managing interdisciplinarity is an oxymoron, but we provide possible pathways (like the 'Big Problems' curriculum in the College). I'm at home in interdisciplinary Humanities - an M.A. from Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, my Ph.D. is in the History of Human Sciences (UChicago). I've taught in the Humanities Common Core as a Harper Instructor, and teach courses now on “Digital Cultures” and “Media Ecology.”

Mai is the Assistant Director for both the Center for Disciplinary Innovation and the Franke Institute for the Humanities. She manages proposals, courses, and stipends for the Center for Disciplinary Innovation (CDI) while overseeing the internal programs, Mellon grant-related projects, and Institute publications for the Franke. You might work with Mai if you are proposing a course to the CDI, giving a Franke Forum lecture, or working on a Franke Mellon grant. Mai received her M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago and her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Culture from Scripps College. Mai studies Improv at the Revival and voice/guitar at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

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Rachel has been the Institute's part-time web and graphic designer for 20 years. She graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in English. She is a Chicago native and a performing singer-songwriter who recently released an album of original songs, Old Sky New (Floop Records, 2024), available on all streaming platforms.