2025-26 YEAR IN REVIEW | The Ethics of Exchange
Letter from the Director—
As the Global Arts + Humanities (GAH) prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary, we have updated our name to the Global Arts + Humanities | Cross-Disciplinary Research Exchange. This name foregrounds the research-centered dimensions of our strategic plan and mission.
As a university-wide initiative, GAH serves as an integral facilitative resource and bridging mechanism for cross-disciplinary work across campuses, colleges, departments, centers, institutes, and between the campus and community. One of the ways that GAH has transformed research culture at the university is by emphasizing the ethical dimensions of cross-disciplinary exchange.
Common definitions of the word “exchange” refer to an act of giving and receiving something — often of the same type or value — or substituting one thing for another. But exchanges are never simply transactional; all forms of exchange, including the exchange of knowledge, have a socio-cultural and ethical dimension because they entail relationships, obligations and consequences for those involved. GAH’s invocation of the word “exchange” in its new name foregrounds a relational ethos grounded in critical reflexivity and a shared sense of responsibility.
Cross-disciplinary exchanges that aspire to a relational ethos are neither lodged in determinism nor in ideas of ethical idealism. Rather, critical cross-disciplinary exchanges commit to navigate differing values, methods and terminologies and the ethical parameters of engagement at all stages of collaboration. The relational ethos that GAH engenders is one of critical humility — including disciplinary humility — which requires understanding differing contexts and histories. By acknowledging shifting social and institutional relations and global and local interconnections, cross-disciplinary exchanges can serve as resources for thinking about contingencies and demands that shape knowledge.
In this Year in Review, we focus on the ethics of cross-disciplinary exchange. This issue spotlights the contributions of scholars, artists and community members whose work engages the ethical dimensions of archival research, community outreach and emergent technologies. I invite you to learn more about the important work that the Global Arts + Humanities has done to transform research culture at Ohio State.
