The Six@Six Lecture Series |
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| Six@Six is an annual series of free community lectures by NKU’s faculty and students that are open to the public. The series showcases the scholarship and creative work on campus by discussing that work in the community.
Check out our upcoming lectures as part of the 2026-2027 Six@Six Lecture Series' season! |
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| Equal Justice Under Law? A History of LGBTQ+ Rights Before the United States Supreme Court |
| The Supreme Court of the United States sits at the apex of the American legal system, and its decisions on questions of constitutional law shape the lives of every person in the country. For LGBTQ+ Americans, gay men and lesbians, bisexual people, transgender and nonbinary individuals, the Court has served alternately as a fortress of oppression and a source of liberation. The arc of its jurisprudence on these issues is one of the most dramatic in American legal history.
This history surveys the major decisions in which the Supreme Court has grappled with the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans, from the earliest relevant cases through the present day. It traces both the doctrinal evolution and the human stories behind the litigation, examining how shifts in constitutional interpretation reflected and shaped broader changes in American society.
It is not always true that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. This story is certainly not one of simple, uninterrupted progress. It is marked by setbacks, missed opportunities, tactical retreats by advocates, and the genuine complexity of constitutional adjudication. And it remains unfinished: questions about the rights of transgender people, the interaction of LGBTQ+ rights with religious liberty claims, and the durability of landmark precedents continue to be litigated before the Court. |
| 6:00 pm September 30, 2026 Baker Hunt Art & Cultural Center 620 Greenup St., Covington, KY 41011 |
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Speaker: Jack Harrison, NKU Chase College of Law
Speaker Bio: Beginning with the 2023-24 academic year, Professor Jack Harrison became the inaugural David and Nancy Wolf Chair in Ethics and Professional Identity, Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law’s first endowed academic chair in its 130-year history. Professor Harrison currently teaches Civil Procedure, Torts, Professional Responsibility, and a seminar on Sexuality, Identity and the Law.
Prior to beginning his academic career with NKU Chase in 2011, Professor Harrison spent almost twenty years as a practicing attorney. In 2023, the Cincinnati Bar Association honored Professor Harrison with the Gerhardstein and Branch LGBTQ+ Legal Advocacy Award for the efforts he has made in furthering the cause of LGBTQ+ rights. Professor Harrison also recently served as Chair of the Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues of the American Association of Law Schools.
He holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law, a Master of Arts and a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, MD, and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. |
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| What We Know and What's Ahead A Conversation about Domestic Violence |
| We know a lot about domestic violence (DV) and how to respond to it from over 40 years of efforts in the U.S. Much of the efforts has involved the legal and service systems to assist the victims and hold offenders accountable.
Does our approach really work? What do we mean by “work”? What does it mean to hold someone “accountable”? Are there other approaches? What can we do to make our community safer?
From her experience as a practitioner and a researcher, Reiko will lead the lecture and a conversation on this complicated and important topic. |
| 6:00 pm October 22, 2026 Behringer-Crawford Museum 1600 Montague Rd., Covington, KY 41011 |
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Speaker: Dr. Reiko Ozaki, NKU School of Social Work
Speaker Bio: Reiko Ozaki, PhD, is an associate professor of social work at NKU and a licensed independent social worker with supervisory designation in Ohio (LISW-S). She has years of social work practice experience focused on domestic violence in the U.S. and consults with organizations in Japan.
Her research interests include victim advocacy and primary prevention related to gender-based violence as well as sense of belonging and community engagement in higher education. She is committed to integrate her teaching, scholarship, and community engagement to provide students with real-life learning opportunities and to improve community wellbeing. |
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| Lessons from the Lab: The Neuroscience of Prenatal Opioid Exposure |
| The opioid epidemic has increased the prevalence of opioid use during pregnancy. This presentation will use a neuroscience perspective to highlight how we are trying to understand the impact this may have on the developing baby.
Explore this journey, how this exposure can be modelled in laboratory animals using a clinical perspective, and what these studies have informed us about the impact on the brain. See where our work is headed to better understand the consequences of the opioid epidemic and how we are trying to develop safe interventions to improve outcomes and reduce stigma. |
| 6:00 pm November 2026 Gravity Diagnostics 812 Russell St., Covington, KY 41011 |
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Speaker: Dr. Brittany Smith, NKU Department of Psychology
Speaker Bio: Brittany Smith joined the Department of Psychological Science in 2022. She was previously at the University of Cincinnati for 11 years, where she completed her Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2016 and postdoctoral fellowship from 2016-2022. She teaches Biopsychology, Biopsychology Lab, and Research Methods. Her interests include behavioral neuroscience, neuroimmunology, molecular neurobiology, and translational research. Her research program is focused on understanding how in utero substance exposure shapes executive function later in life. |
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| The Love Project A Film Screening and Panel Discussion |
| Throughout 2026 Professor Chris Strobel and some NorseMedia students put together a documentary about the power of agape, or selfless, love and the impact it has on community.
With participants and partners from the university and public (such as True Theatre and the Scripps Howard Center for Public Engagement) the work explores expressions of love and kindness from a variety of viewpoints. The presentation will include a screening of the documentary and a discussion with the faculty and students who created it. |
| 6:00 pm January 21, 2027 Cincinnati Art Museum 953 Eden Park Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45202 |
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Speaker: Chris Strobel, NKU School of Media and Communication
Speaker Bio: Chris Strobel is a Professor of Electronic Media and Broadcasting in the School of Media and Communication.
In his long career at NKU he has taught pretty much every course in the EMB catalog, but now mostly focuses upon media aesthetics and the narrative filmmaking aspects of media creation, such as editing, directing, and screenwriting. He's been recognized locally, regionally, and nationally for his filmmaking work, and even won a "dancing with the scholars" event.
For the past six years he has returned to directing NorseMedia, NKU's student-staffed video production house. |
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| 6:00 pm February 2026 TBD |
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Speaker: Michael DiCicco, NKU Department of Education
Speaker Bio: Dr. Michael DiCicco is an associate professor of literacy education in the Department of Teacher Preparation and Educational Studies at Northern Kentucky University. He is a former middle school teacher and his research focuses on middle level teacher preparation and middle level literacy. He received his PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of South Florida. |
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The Influence of Digital Platforms on Tourism Budgeting Behavior |
This presentation provides insights for stakeholders in the tourism industry on how to predict potential tourists’ budgeting decisions, by observing how they are influenced by social media, and other digital platforms. |
| 6:00 pm March 24, 2027 Sparkhaus Covington 727 Madison Ave, Covington, KY 41011 |
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Speaker: Sami Al-Farhan, NKU Haile College of Business
Speaker Bio: Usamah F. Alfarhan (Sami) is an applied microeconomist who earned his Ph.D. from Texas Tech University in 2010. He served as an economic consultant for the USAID-funded Fiscal Reform Project in Jordan before rejoining Academia in 2012. Since then, he taught economics at the principles level, intermediate microeconomics, labor economics, mathematical economics and economics of tourism mainly at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman.
Sami joined Haile College of Business at Northern Kentucky University in 2022. His research focus is fundamentally on applied queries in labor and tourism economics, citable in reputable outlets such as the International Journal of Manpower, Economic Modeling, the International Journal of Consumer Studies, Tourism Economics and Current Issues in Tourism, among others. He also serves as Scientific Coordinator of the economic module at the Gulf Labour Markets, Migration and Population Programme and as Associate Guest Editor at Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. |
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Follow the button below to RSVP to one of more of our Six@Six lectures! |
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