George Washington Forum News and Events

Professor Penelope Ismay

Penelope Ismay is Associate Professor of History at Boston College and Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Undergraduate Engagement.

She is interested in how the radical changes associated with modernity were made socially meaningful in Britain and around the world. Her first book examined the surprising ways in which Britons used friendly societies to navigate the new social landscape of rapidly growing urban centers in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

She is currently working on a social history of self-interest and on the changing boundaries that Britons drew around it in the second half of the nineteenth century. Tentatively titled, The Boundaries of Self-Interest, her hope is that this new story might remind us that when Britain experienced its most profound period of economic growth, it also worked hardest to keep self-interest within socially tenable boundaries.

Professor Ismay teaches courses on early modern and modern Britain and its empire, revolution and social trust in modern Europe; money and credit, women and work, marriage and family, and sociability and associational life.

Kevin Conley Ruffner, Isabel Huber Planton

Kevin Conley Ruffner

Kevin Ruffner served in a variety of domestic and foreign assignments with the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 until his retirement in 2017.  He continued as a contractor until 2023.  As a member of the CIA History Staff, he worked on major declassification projects, including the CORONA satellite system and Nazi war criminals and collaborators.  The Agency subsequently declassified his publications as part of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.  In addition to his civilian career in the Federal Government, Ruffner served in the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve from 1982 until his retirement in 2010.  Ruffner earned a Ph.D. in American Civilization at the George Washington University.  He is a 2024-2025 Broadening Academic Initiative Hybrid Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Isabel Huber Planton

Isabel Huber Planton received a BA in English Literature from Ohio University in 2006 and an MLS from Indiana University in 2008. She has worked in the Teaching and Research Department at the Lilly Library at IU since 2011. During her time at the Lilly Library, she has become increasingly interested in the library’s extensive manuscript collections related to Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Since 2018, IU has hosted a summer festival known as Granfalloon: A Kurt Vonnegut Convergence. Presented by the IU Arts and Humanities Council and inspired by Vonnegut, the Granfalloon “brings together musicians, artists, thinkers, and good people from all walks of life for a celebration of art, ideas, and community.” The 2025 Granfalloon will take place in spring and summer, tying together many campus and community events with themes relating to this year’s selected Vonnegut novel, Cat’s Cradle. In conjunction with past Granfalloons, Isabel has curated three Kurt Vonnegut exhibitions and given talks on various aspects of Vonnegut’s life and writings. She hasn’t read every single one of his novels yet but she’s working on it.

Professor Emma Griffin, FRHistS

Emma Griffin is a Professor of Modern British History and Head of School at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the author of several books, and the President of the Royal Historical Society, 2020-24.

Emma Griffin was educated at London and Cambridge and following eighteen years at UEA, is now based at the University of London. She is the author of five books, most recently Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy, published by Yale UP in 2020, as well as many articles, essays and reviews in both academic and non-academic publications. She is currently working on a book provisionally entitled Industrial Revolutions: A World History for Penguin Press / Allen Lane.

Emma is a frequent contributor to radio and television, and has written and presented several Radio 4 documentaries on diverse aspects of her research, from the history of foxhunting, to the industrial revolution, to the gender pay gap and its history. She was a historical advisor for the Channel 4 drama, The Mill and co-presented ‘The Real Mill’ with Tony Robinson on More4. She has appeared as an expert contributor on several radio and television programs, including BBC1’s Why do you Think You Are? and Radio 4’s In Our Time.

Dr. Joel Mokyr

Dr. Joel Mokyr conducts research on the economic history of Europe, and specializes in the period 1750-1914. His current research is concerned with the understanding of the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies, as well as the impact that industrialization and economic progress have had on economic welfare. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Cliometric Society as well as the British Academy, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei and the Dutch Royal Academy. He has been the President of the Economic History Association, editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, and a co-editor of the Journal of Economic History. He is currently co-editor of a book series, the Princeton University Press Economic History of the World. He was the 2006 winner of the biennial Heineken Award for History offered by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the winner of the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history. His most recent book is A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy, published by Princeton University Press in 2016. He has supervised over forty doctoral dissertations in the departments of Economics and History.

Brianne Wolf

Brianne Wolf is Assistant Professor of Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and Director of the Political Economy minor at Michigan State University’s James Madison College. Trained in the history of political thought, her research and teaching reflect on questions about the interaction between economics and politics, liberalism, and moral judgment. Each theme relates to a central concern as a scholar: understanding the proper relationship between the individual and society. Dr. Wolf is broadly interested in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially the work of the Scottish and French Enlightenment thinkers.

Derek K. Yonai

Derek K. Yonai is the Peter and Sue Freytag Associate Professor of Economics in the School of Business at Flagler College and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics.

With a focus on the Philosophy of Business and the social aspects of entrepreneurship, Dr. Yonai has led several academic centers including at Campbell University, Florida Southern College, Southern Methodist University, and Emporia State University. His published research discusses the economic role of property rights and the law and his popular writings deal with the importance of economic freedom.

Dr. Yonai earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of California at Irvine and graduated with honors from Whittier College School of Law. Additionally, he earned a Master of Arts in economics and a Ph.D. from George Mason University.

Jared Rubin (Chapman University)

JARED RUBIN is an economic historian interested in the political and religious economies of the Middle East and Western Europe. His research focuses on historical relationships between political and religious institutions and their role in economic development. His book, Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge University Press, 2017) explores the role that Islam and Christianity played in the long-run “reversal of fortunes” between the economies of the Middle East and Western Europe. It was awarded the Douglass North Best Book Award for the best research in institutional and organizational economics published during the previous two years, awarded by the Society of Institutional and Organizational Economics. Rubin’s work has appeared in journals such as Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economics & Statistics, Economic Journal, Management Science and many others. He is the Co-Director of Chapman University’s Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics and Society (IRES) and the President of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (ASREC). He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Economic History, Journal of Comparative Economics, Explorations in Economic History and Essays in Economic and Business History. He has been awarded over $1 million in grants from the John Templeton Foundation for his work in the economics of religion. He graduated with a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2007 and a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 2002.