The central preoccupation of Adam Smith's research and writing is the role that the material world—everyday objects, representational media, natural and built landscapes—plays in our political lives.  

Elke Siegel's research is in German literature from 1900 to the present, literary theory, and psychoanalysis.

Bryn Rosenfeld's research interests include political behavior, development and democratization, protest, post-communist politics, and survey methodology. Her first book, The Autocratic Middle Class (Princeton University Press, 2020), explains how middle-class economic dependence on the state impedes democratization and contributes to authoritarian resilience. 

Banu Ozer Griffin's academic interests include teaching Turkish as a second language, curriculum design and development, and the language learning process through intercultural competence. She is an advisor for Cornell's Turkish Student Association and Translator–Interpreter Program.

Kelly Musick's research focuses on family change and social inequality in the contemporary United States and other industrialized countries. It has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Russell Sage Foundation, and Swedish Research Council.

Nicholas Mulder works on European and international history from 1870 to the present. His research focuses on political, economic, and intellectual history, with particular attention to the era of the world wars between 1914 and 1945.

Patrizia McBride is director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies and professor in the Department of German Studies. Her research and teaching span German-language literature and culture from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, with a special emphasis on theories of modernity and modernism; the intersection of aesthetics, philosophy, and political theory; visual and media studies; and Austrian literature and culture, especially fin-de-siècle Vienna. 

Raissa V. Krivitsky teaches in Cornell's Russian language program. Second/foreign language pedagogy and the relationship between language and culture are central to her professional interests.

Elena Iankova's research interests include business, government, and civil society relations. Her book Eastern European Capitalism in the Making (Cambridge University Press, 2002) traces the metamorphosis of this relationship in the post-communist region after the fall of communism.