Skip to main content
ILR banners outside Ives Hall

Four Faculty Receive Named Professorships

The Cornell University Board of Trustees has approved named professorships for Brad Bell, George Boyer, Kati Griffith and Louis Hyman.  

Alex Colvin, ILR’s Kenneth F. Kahn '69 Dean and Martin F. Scheinman ’75, MS ’76, Professor of Conflict Resolution, shared the news with the ILR community on Wednesday: 

Brad Bell, a member of the ILR faculty since 2002, will be named the William J. Conaty Professor in Strategic Human Resources. A leading scholar of individual and team level human resource phenomena, employing the disciplinary and methodological approaches of his field of industrial and organizational psychology, he was promoted to full professor in 2019. 

A major stream of Bell’s research is in the area of training and development, particularly looking at how technology and autonomous learning contexts affect training outcomes. Another major focus of his research is in the area of work groups and teams, where he examines both team-learning and performance outcomes. The third area of his research is focused on virtual work arrangements, looking at how virtual teams function and the impact of telecommuting. 

Bell is an excellent teacher and has also provided stalwart service to the ILR School, including his current role as director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies.

George Boyer will be named the Martin P. Catherwood Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations. Boyer joined the ILR faculty in 1982 and was promoted to full professor in 1999. 

A leading economic historian whose research focuses on British labor markets from 1750 to 1940 and British and U.S. social policy from 1750 to 1950, he published his widely cited book, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, in 1990. The tome was reprinted in 1993 and re-issued in a paperback edition in 2006. Boyer published his latest book in 2019, The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain

A superb teacher, Boyer is a past winner of ILR’s General Mills Award for Exemplary Teaching and in 2018 he was named a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow in recognition of his teaching. Boyer is currently serving as senior associate dean for Academic Affairs.

Kati Griffith will be named the Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor of Labor-Management Relations. She has been a faculty member at ILR since 2007 and was promoted to full professor in 2020. 

Griffith is a leading scholar of employment and labor law, whose work focuses on three main areas. The first, and most prominent, is her work on the intersection of employment and immigration law, or “immployment law,” a term she developed and popularized. A second focus of Griffith’s research is on the definition of employment – specifically focused on the definition of joint employers under the law – which is a foundational question in the application of labor and employment laws, and has become increasingly prominent with the growth of the gig economy and the use of independent contractors. The third area of Griffith’s research deals with the legal status of worker centers, an important new form of worker representation. 

During her time at ILR, Griffith has won several teaching awards, including the Stern Award for Teaching and Mentoring and the MacIntyre Award for Exemplary Teaching, as well as being named by the University as one of the inaugural Stephen H. Weiss Junior Fellows for Exemplary Teaching. She has made many service contributions to ILR and currently serves as chair of the Department of Labor Relations, Law, and History.

Louis Hyman will be named the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations. Hyman joined the faculty in 2011 and was promoted to full professor in 2019. 

A leading scholar in the history of capitalism field, Hyman has published three books. His research in the books Borrow and Debtor Nation focused on consumer credit and the impact of business and government policies, showing how personal credit was central to the development of the middle class, but also laid the foundations for subsequent debt-fueled economic crises. In his most recent book, Temp: How American Work, Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary, published in 2018, Hyman studies the history of the development of temporary, consulting, and contingent work during the postwar period, laying the groundwork for the modern gig economy and other precarious work. 

Hyman is an excellent teacher and has made many service contributions to ILR, including directing the Institute for Workplace Studies and the New York City Master of Professional Studies program

Weekly Inbox Updates