Meet the New PEWS Postdoctoral and Graduate Fellows!

Hi everyone! My name is Clair Baleshta, and I’m the new Postdoctoral Fellow in AI Ethics at UC’s Center for Humanities and Technology (CHaT). My research explores issues involving AI harm, (dis)trust in AI, and the impacts of AI in education. My broader areas of interest include feminist philosophy, bioethics, and the philosophy of harm reduction.

As part of my role, I will also be assisting with programming and operations at the Center for Public Engagement with Science (PEWS). I’m thrilled to be joining the PEWS community, and I can’t wait to become more involved with the center’s incredible events and initiatives. In particular, I’m very excited about the opportunity to support initiatives at the intersection of PEWS and CHaT. Much of my own research in AI ethics has focused directly on public engagement (for example, I’ve collaborated with public school boards, teachers’ unions, and other community partners on the use of AI in education) and I really look forward to exploring new ways of engaging public stakeholders in conversations and ideas surrounding AI ethics.

Another feature of PEWS that I’m especially excited about is its collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to public engagement. I firmly believe in the importance of interdisciplinarity when it comes to addressing complex societal issues (including those of trust in science, political polarization, and other targets of public engagement with science). Throughout my own education, I’ve also tried to seek out training and experience in interdisciplinary collaboration whenever possible. For example, my undergraduate degree itself was in “Knowledge Integration” at the University of Waterloo – a program focused on cultivating skills in interdisciplinary research, problem-solving, and collaboration. Similarly, while completing my PhD in Philosophy at Western University, I was a member of Western’s Rotman Institute of Philosophy, which brings together philosophers, scientists, and policymakers in order to address complex and socially relevant questions.

Through the Rotman Institute, I was able to take part in a range of activities which strengthened both my understanding of and appreciation for interdisciplinary collaboration. These experiences included membership in a Think Tank on “Responsible AI in Education” as well as multiple Interdisciplinary Working Groups on AI; research visits to international institutes such as the iHub for Interdisciplinary Research on Digitization and Society at Radboud University, Netherlands and the Institute for Science and Ethics at the University of Bonn, Germany; and involvement in several grant projects on topics ranging from “(Dis)Trust in AI: Perspectives Across Disciplines and Sectors” to the “Philosophical Foundations of Interdisciplinarity.”

I’m very excited to continue pursuing these kinds of interdisciplinary activities as a Postdoctoral Fellow, and I cannot wait to learn more about the interdisciplinary, collaborative, and publicly engaged work being done by others at PEWS, CHaT, and across the UC community more broadly.

On that note, please feel free to get in touch if you’re interested in AI ethics, public engagement with science, or anything in between! My email is baleshcr@ucmail.uc.edu, and more information on my own research can be found at clairbaleshta.com

I am a historian studying how popular performance circulated scientific knowledge in the nineteenth and early-twentieth United States. As the new Postdoctoral Fellow at UC’s Center for Public Engagement with Science (PEWS), I’m most excited to find ways to bring my research into the present through programming that showcases how this history informs our understanding of biomedical science today.

Examining the relationship between experts and audiences is at the core of my training. I received my PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from Tufts University in 2024 and I completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Medicine and the Medical Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. Currently, I’m working on my book project, Empirical Spectacles: Performing Science in the Age of Eugenics, under contract with Columbia University Press’s Race, Health, and Inequality series. Based on my dissertation, Empirical Spectacles examines how American eugenicists’ public performances of biomedical expertise in the early twentieth century allowed for increasingly broader audiences to interpret and reproduce eugenics ideology on the stage and screen. It can be easy today to dismiss eugenics as a pseudoscience, but in the first decades of the last century, eugenics was very much a part of mainstream scientific discourse. Ultimately, this book asks: what does scientific expertise look like and how is it demonstrated for both professional and lay publics?

This idea that there are multiple “publics” that scientists are speaking to and communicating with is a key part of both my research and the work of PEWS. As part of my postdoc with PEWS, I look forward to facilitating programs that engage with many publics—PEWS affiliates, UC students and faculty, as well as folks outside of campus. I’ve worked professionally in theatre as a director and a dramaturg, so I’m excited to take ove the verbatim theatre project started by previous PEWS postdoc Kate Nicole in collaboration with the Clifton Community Players. And I have some upcoming teaching opportunities at UC, so keep an eye out for those announcements!

If you’re looking to connect about science and performance or about PEWS’s work more generally, feel free to reach out at levensmi@ucmail.uc.edu. You can also learn more about my research at MiaLevenson.com.

I am a Master of Public Health student with a concentration in Global Health at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, graduating in Spring 2027. I served as the Sustainability Fellow during the 2025- 2026 academic year and am excited to build upon my skills and collaborate with PEWS again this year. I am currently involved in research with the Center for Collaboration on Climate & Community for Health (C4H), focusing on climate and community health throughout Cincinnati and the relationship between climate change and mental health. In addition to my studies, I am working with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital on projects addressing heart disease in Indigenous populations, with a focus on community engagement, health equity, and health policy. After graduation, I hope to pursue a career in health equity and community engagement, focusing on improving health outcomes and public health initiatives in under-resourced communities in the United States and globally.

The PEWS Sustainability Fellow supports the PEWS Sustainability Initiative, sponsored by Research2030, and plays a large role in helping to plan and implement activities for Sustainability@UC Week. Projects also include planning interdisciplinary sustainability events, assisting with grant submissions, creating a sustainability-based graduate community, and meeting with UC administrators to discuss sustainability and interdisciplinary opportunities for students.