Ben Bernard is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the College Fellows program. A specialist in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French history, at the University of Virginia he designed and teaches two Engagements courses, “Decadence: The Ethics of Excess” and “You Are Who You Meet: The History and Ethics of Friendship.” He was a Resident Faculty Fellow at Brown College from 2022–2024, in which capacity he hosted scholarly programming focusing on history, French, and LGBTQ+ studies. Along with Sage Tanguay, in spring 2024 he co-taught a Brown interdisciplinary studies course, “Sister Revolutions,” which resulted in a four-part audio documentary podcast about the history of Charlottesville and its French sister city, Besançon, in the long eighteenth century.