The 2027 Corinne Lyman Lecture in International Studies will be presented on Tuesday, October 27, 2026 at 6:30 pm in the Benes Room in Hamilton Williams Campus Center, 40 Rowland Ave, Delaware, OH, 43015. The guest lecturer will be Muetter Tohti.
Muetter Tohti is a human rights researcher specializing in documenting and analyzing the Chinese government's human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where she was born. Her work focuses on preserving evidence, examining patterns of state repression, and advancing accountability for abuses affecting Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim communities in the region.
She holds an LL.M. in Human Rights Law with Criminal Justice from the University of Kent and a BSc in Political Economy from the University of Bergen. She is a member of the China Studies team at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, where she contributes to research on human rights, state policy, and systems of repression in China.
Previously, Tohti worked with the Citizen Lab, the University of Sheffield, and the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database. Her work across these roles has included legal analysis, field documentation, evidence preservation, and survivor-centered advocacy. Drawing on her academic training, professional experience, and personal connection to the region, she works to ensure that survivors' experiences are documented responsibly, understood within their broader legal and political contexts, and incorporated into international efforts to promote justice and accountability.
Corinne Lyman was a faculty member in the Politics and Government Department at Ohio Wesleyan University from 1968 to 1999. Here she taught International Relations and Organization, and Comparative Government. In 1978 Corinne won the Sherwood Dodge Shankland teaching award.
From the early seventies until the present she participated off campus in at least fifteen seminars or Conferences on International Relations by presenting papers or lectures. She is a member of six professional organizations and has traveled widely in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Far East.
Dr. Lyman has published at least fifteen book reviews, and has presented papers, or served as panelist, or lectured or served as chairperson on a like number of other occasions.
As a faculty member she served on a least 20 committees, boards, or councils, including Faculty Personnel and Academic Policy, on each of which she served twice. A special task was encouragement and management of a program for faculty scholarships for Black students.
Upon the initiative of Dean Janet Ragatz and with the cooperation of her colleague in Economics, Dr. Norman Gharrity, she was instrumental in establishing the International Studies Program at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1979. She remained the Chair of the International Studies Program Committee for the succeeding twenty years, until her retirement in 1999, at which time she was the recipient of the Daniel E. "Andy" Anderson Campus and Community Conscience Award.
The inaugural lecture was held April 8, 2004 as Dr. Stephen Walt of Harvard University spoke on "The Global Response to American Primacy."