On February 26th, the Indiana University (IU) College of Arts and Sciences presented Dr. Dorothy Noyes, director of OSU’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies, with its Distinguished Alumni Scholar Award, recognizing her extraordinary contributions to folklore and ethnographic research. 

Noyes studies political performance and ritual, the traditional public sphere in Europe, and the careers of culture concepts. She has lectured, taught, or consulted in over 30 countries and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Tartu in Estonia (2018). She is a fellow of the American Folklore Society and served the society as president in 2018 and 2019. In 2021, she received its Kenneth Goldstein Award for Lifetime Academic Leadership.

In addition to the award conferral, Dr. Noyes will presented a lecture entitled “The Human Scale: Admonitions From Opera and Folktale” which highlighted how performances across time and culture have been used to warn leaders about the dangers of distancing themselves from their societies. Noyes' presentation explored how each performance sought to give timely warning to powerful actors at a time of radical change in the social order.