Welcome to our newest faculty members for the 2025-2026 School Year!

Aidan Combs is one of our newest Assistant Professors, having joined our faculty in Autumn of 2025. Prior to coming to Ohio State, she was a postdoctoral scholar University of Bamberg Fundamentals of Natural Language Processing Group, in Bamberg, Germany and a Visiting Scholar, University of Stuttgart Institute for Natural Language Processing, in Stuttgart, Germany. In Germany, she was working with computational linguists broadly interested in the relationship between sociology, psychology, and language. More specifically, the project she worked on was about how people express and interpret emotion through combinations of images and text in social media posts. Dr. Combs is looking forward to applying what she learned from them about language modeling to study how meanings of social categories develop, change, and are applied when we categorize people. 

Emily Ekl joined the faculty in Autumn 2025 after completing her PhD at Indiana University. Her research leverages qualitative and quantitative methods to answer questions related to health and medicine, status, work, and gender. Most recently, her dissertation research examines how speech-language pathologists provide quality patient care when faced with the dual constraints of organizational regulations and limited professional status. Dr. Ekl is currently teaching Health Disparities in Social Context. 

Bethany Everett became a member of our faculty in Spring of 2026 as an Associate Professor. Dr. Everett has brought her scholarship to several academic institutions during her career including the University of Utah, Columbis University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research primarily studies social patterning and social determinants of health inequalities in the United States. Dr. Everett has continuously received grant funding through the National Institute of Health, primarily from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

We are lucky to have you each as faculty members!