Dr. Benjamin L. Jones (he/him) is an artist and author who studies the speculative analysis and praxis of oppressed people. A former Provost’s Fellow, he is currently an Assistant Professor in the History of Art Department at The Ohio State University. At OSU, Jones co-founded the Samella Lewis Initiative for the Study of Black Art, which organizes writers salons, fosters archival research, and hosts public talks.

Jones earned his Ph.D. in Art History with an interdisciplinary cluster certificate in Critical Theory from Northwestern University. He graduated Summa Cum Laude at the San Francisco Art Institute with a B.A. in the History and Theory of Contemporary Art. His art-historical interests include contemporary intersections of art and power, futurism, and Black radical visual culture and performance.

Funded by the Social Science Research Council and the Mellon foundation, his work engages critical ethnic studies, critical pedagogical practices, and feminist mobilizations of onto-epistemology and quantum mechanics. He is currently at work on three concomitant book projects. The first to launch will be What We Cain't Do: The Pedagogy of the Black Radical Aesthetic Tradition, followed by What We Fin’na Do: Afterlives of the Underground Railroad in Art, and an art book published in pencil and mixed media titled What We Fin’na Do: Preface to a 5,000 Year Almanac. In Summer 2022 he was a facilitator for the Black Arts Movement School Modality, (Iteration 2, East Coast), alongside co-facilitators: Romi Crawford, Theaster Gates, Sampada Aranke, Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, Kamau Patton, Michael Simanga. Prior to his current positions at OSU, Jones was a Dissertation Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Black Studies