The Ohio State Center for Feminist Research, Education and Engagement (FREE Center) is a hub for community-engaged feminist research and teaching that brings together individuals from across the university and the Columbus community.
Supported by a five-year, $500,000 grant from the Office of Academic Affairs, the center aims to inspire, generate, and support collaborative research and community engagement projects rooted in feminist approaches and perspectives.
Research and Connection Clusters are central to the work of the FREE Center. These clusters bring together faculty, graduate students, and community partners around shared areas of interest related to feminist research, education, and engagement, broadly defined. The FREE Center offers funding each semester to support the work of these clusters.
The FREE Center also hosts a variety of events for the campus and Columbus communities, such as its annual spring panel discussion or lecture and FREE Writes, a writing group for feminist scholars at Ohio State.
Interested in collaborating with the FREE Center? Send us an email at free@osu.edu.
Meet the Team
Dr. Guisela Latorre, PhD (she/her)
FREE Center Board Member, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Guisela Latorre is a Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies who specializes in modern and contemporary U.S. Latinx and Latin American art with a special emphasis on Chicana/Latina feminism. She is the author of Democracy on the Wall: Street Art of the Post-Dictatorship Era in Chile (2019) and Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals from California (2008). In addition, she was co-curator and co-author of the exhibition/book ¡Murales Rebeldes! L.A. Chicana/Chicano Murals Under Siege (2017). Her other publications include “The Art of Disruption: Chicana/o Art’s Politicized Strategies for Aesthetic Innovation” in The Routledge Handbook of Chicana/o Studies (2018) and “Indigenous Images of Democracy on City Streets: Native Representations in Contemporary Chilean Graffiti and Muralism” in Street Art of Resistance (2017). She is currently working on an anthology on the arts collective Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo.
Dr. Joanne G. Patterson, PhD, MPH, MSW (she/her)
FREE Center Board Member, Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Joanne G. Patterson is an NIH NCI-funded behavioral scientist whose research program aims to reduce cancer inequities among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) populations. Her research applies multilevel and intersectionality frameworks to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of culturally targeted interventions to reduce behavioral cancer risks among LGBTQ+ populations. She is especially interested in tobacco and alcohol use, cancer screening, and upstream socioeconomic factors, including food insecurity.
Dr. Patterson applies mixed methods to her experimental and implementation studies to qualitatively explore how context and culture affect participant engagement with behavioral interventions, experimental findings, and intervention implementation and adoption.
Dr. fabian romero, PhD (they/them)
FREE Center Board Member, Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies and Affiliate in American Indian Studies and in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
fabian romero is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies and Affiliated faculty in American Indian Studies at the Ohio State University. They got their PhD in the Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Department with a certificate in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington in 2023.
fabian is a P’urhepécha poet-scholar who has co-founded several writing and performance groups, including Hijas de Su Madre, Indigenize Productions, and Parakata Journeys: Queer P’urhépecha Artists and Scholars.
fabian’s work explores the manifestations of colonial heteropatriarchy in contemporary mestizo P’urhépecha heritage family structures in Michoacán and the diaspora. They work to resurge P’urhépecha queer kinship and cultural practices as antidotes to colonial violence and ongoing dispossession of land, more-than-human, and human kinship.
Dr. Lily Sheehan, PhD (she/her)
FREE Center Board Member, Associate Professor of English and Affiliate in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Lily Sheehan's research and teaching interests are in twentieth and twenty-first century Anglophone literatures and cultures (especially the US and UK), feminist and queer theory, visual and material culture, critical fashion studies, periodical studies, affect studies, and studies of race and ethnicity.
Her current projects include an edited book on fashion and literature for Cambridge University Press's Critical Concept Series, a monograph about how texts and textiles shaped conceptions of peace during the Cold War, and an article about the whisper network as a method of navigating gender-based violence. She is also co-editor of the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies.
Dr. Mytheli Sreenivas, PhD (she/her)
Ex-Officio FREE Center Board Member, Chair and Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Mytheli Sreenivas is the Chair and Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her work centers on the history of modern South Asia, with a focus on women’s and gender history, the history of sexuality and the family, colonialism and nationalism, and the cultural and political economy of reproduction. Broadly speaking, she is fascinated by how certain gendered norms that we often assume are constant and unchanging, such as about family, kinship, reproduction, sexuality, or love, are actually deeply intertwined with historical change in the modern world.
Laura Hennigan (she/her)
Program Coordinator
Laura Hennigan is the Program Coordinator for the FREE Center, housed in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. A graduate of The Ohio State University, she has an extensive background in research, communications, and connection building.
In this role, Laura supports the FREE Center as it deepens and broadens community engaged scholarship by sustaining collaborative interdisciplinary research and teaching partnerships among core faculty, affiliated faculty, students, and community partners.
Tamar Westphal (she/her)
Graduate Research Assistant
Tamar Westphal is a PhD student in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, focusing on femme theory. Drawing on critical archival studies and performance studies, she theorizes femme embodiment and erotics, as well as the cross-generational resonance of femme archival texts.
Prior to OSU, Tamar spent over a decade in non-profit communications, working on domestic/sexual violence policymaking and promoting gender equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and public health. She received a BA from Mount Holyoke in Musical Theatre and Gender Studies and remains deeply involved as a board and committee member of the Alum Association of Mount Holyoke College and the Women’s College Alliance.