Jennifer Brunner

Profile

Biography

Jennifer Brunner joined the department in January 2024, and is supervised in her research by Drs. Peter Gardner and Tom O'Brien. She is a remote PhD researcher, living in the State of Ohio in the United States of America. Jennifer holds political and judicial experience in the U.S., currently serving as a Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, an elected position as one of seven members of the state's highest court. Brunner holds prior elective experience as Ohio's first female Secretary of State, overseeing the 2008 presidential election in Ohio resulting in the election of Barack Obama. She has served as an elected state trial judge and middle-level appellate judge. She is licensed as an attorney and holds 17 years private law practice experience.

Jennifer's undergraduate degree is in Sociology-Gerontology from Miami University of Ohio, a contributing motivator for starting a felony drug court when she served as a trial judge. While Secretary of State, Brunner commissioned a voting machine study involving three teams of security researchers, based at Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA), the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA), and WebWise Security, Inc. in (Santa Barbara, CA), to conduct security reviews of the state's electronic voting systems. In 2008 she was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for her election protection work.

Jennifer's research at York is centered on the repatriation of colonially looted objects and artefacts and is focused on understanding the stories associated with the objects over time as part of the repatriation process. Her specific research focus is on successful repatriations, such as have occurred from France to Benin of Dahomey tribal objects, from the Netherlands to Sri Lanka of a ceremonial cannon and other objects stolen from the King of Kandy by the Dutch in 1765, and the return of a totem from Scotland to the indigenous Nisga'a tribe in British Columbiana, Canada. She is also comparatively studying the complexities related to requests for return of the Benin Bronzes of the Edo tribe of Nigeria that are scattered about the world.

Education:

PhD in Sociology, University of York (in progress)

J.D. (Honors) Capital University Law School, Columbus, Ohio USA

B.A. (Cum Laude) in Sociology-Gerontology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio USA

Publications

Selected publications

Is Limiting Abortion a Pretext for Oligarchy?: Abortion and the Quest to Limit Citizen-Initiated Ballot Rights in Ohio

Wisconsin Law Review 2023 | journal-article

The Benin Human Rights Commission: An Extraordinary Ally for the Beninese People

U.S Department of State, U.S. Embassy in Benin 2022-08-29 | report

Cupcakes and Courage Little Blue Valiant Publishing 2012 | book

Research

Overview

My research explores colonially looted object and artefacts that are the subject of repatriation from the perspective of their object biographies. I am taking into account various points of view, including those of the current holders of the objects to the claimants of the objects today. I am especially interested in understanding what meaning the objects have had since being created and the opinions of younger people who today live in the objects' places of origin, along with the significance of the objects to them today. I ask the question, "Can a society imagine its future if it cannot conceive of its past?" The research also explores the difficulties in repatriating looted objects when they have become art in a society now holding them and how they transitioned from their origin to that status.

Teaching

Other teaching

I have taught as an adjunct professor at Tiffin University in Ohio, USA, at both the undergraduate and masters levels in the area of ethics for law enforcement officers and constitutional criminal law. I have lectured frequently at the John Glenn College for Public Policy at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, USA. My instructional experience includes serving as a USAID (U.S. State Department) short-term technical expert for rule of law on judicial reform and government accountability in the Republic of Serbia, teaching principled negotiation in the Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and civil society participation in The Republic of Kazakhstan, assisting the Human Rights Commission in the Republic of Benin, and performing election observation in the Arab Republic of Egypt as part of a team of observers.