The Ohio State University Department of Dance is proud to celebrate Professor Harmony Bench, who has been named the recipient of the 2026 Dance Studies Association (DSA) Mid-Career Award, one of the field's highest honors recognizing outstanding leadership and scholarly achievement among mid-career dance studies researchers.

The award acknowledges Dr. Bench's transformative contributions to dance scholarship and her pioneering work at the intersection of dance, technology, media studies, digital humanities, and performance history. As Professor of Dance History and Theory in Ohio State's Department of Dance, Bench has emerged as a leading voice in shaping how scholars understand movement, archives, data, and digital culture.

According to the Dance Studies Association, the Mid-Career Award recognizes "the leadership of mid-career scholars in the development of our field." Dr. Bench's body of work exemplifies that mission through groundbreaking research, collaborative scholarship, and internationally recognized digital humanities projects.

Among her many accomplishments is the acclaimed book Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), which explores how dance circulates through contemporary digital networks and communities. She is also co-editor, with Puja Batra-Wells, of Archival Entanglements (The Ohio State University Press, 2026), a multidisciplinary collection examining archives, knowledge production, and cultural memory.

Bench's collaborative research with scholar Kate Elswit has been especially influential in advancing digital approaches to dance history. Their award-winning project, Dunham's Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry, received the 2021 ATHE/ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship. Together, they have helped establish new methodologies for understanding dance history through data, visualization, and computational analysis.

Her recent and ongoing projects continue to push the boundaries of the field. Through initiatives including Visceral Histories/Visual Arguments: Dance-Based Approaches to Data and Radical Accounting: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Data as a Framework for Historical Imagination, commissioned as part of the Whitney Museum of American Art's Edges of Ailey exhibition, Bench explores the possibilities of data-driven storytelling, embodied archives, and historical imagination. Her current research engages critically and creatively with motion data, machine learning, and performing arts history.

The recognition from the Dance Studies Association highlights not only Bench's scholarly achievements but also her role in cultivating new directions for dance research, mentoring emerging scholars, and building interdisciplinary collaborations that extend the reach and impact of dance studies.

Bench will be formally honored during the 2026 Dance Studies Association conference, Speculative Choreographies: Bodies, Economies, and Movement in a World in Flux, where award recipients from across the discipline will be recognized for their contributions to research, publishing, leadership, and service.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Harmony Bench on this well-deserved honor and celebrating her continued contributions to advancing dance scholarship at The Ohio State University and beyond.