About

Joyce Bell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Her research agenda focuses on race, social movements, work, organizations, and diversity in higher education. Her work in the area of race, social movements, and the professions primarily examines how resistance to racism influences professional fields. She authored the book 'Black Power Professionals: The Black Power Movement and American Social Work' (2014, Columbia University Press), which details the impact of the Black Power movement on the social work profession. Additionally, her research interests include the concept of diversity as a racial project, exploring how diversity discourse functions as a tool to co-opt progressive racial policies, movements, and discourse within institutions, higher education policy, and legal contexts.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Mahler series with multiplicative coefficient sequences

  ArXiv.org · 2026-03-24

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We prove that every Mahler series, over a field of characteristic $0$, with multiplicative coefficients is regular in the sense of Allouche and Shallit. We also obtain an explicit characterization of such series. This yields a joint extension of the characterization of rational series with multiplicative coefficients (by Bézivin and Bell--Bruin--Coons) and of multiplicative automatic sequences (by Konieczny--Lemańczyk--Müllner). Both of these results are used in our characterization, so we do not obtain new proofs of these special cases.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Mahler series with multiplicative coefficient sequences

  HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2026-03-24

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We prove that every Mahler series, over a field of characteristic $0$, with multiplicative coefficients is regular in the sense of Allouche and Shallit. We also obtain an explicit characterization of such series. This yields a joint extension of the characterization of rational series with multiplicative coefficients (by Bézivin and Bell--Bruin--Coons) and of multiplicative automatic sequences (by Konieczny--Lemańczyk--Müllner). Both of these results are used in our characterization, so we do not obtain new proofs of these special cases.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Effective Isotrivial Mordell-Lang in Positive Characteristic

  American Journal of Mathematics · 2025-03-27

  article1st authorCorresponding

  abstract: The isotrivial Mordell-Lang theorem of Moosa and Scanlon (2004) describes the set $X\cap\Gamma$ when $X$ is a subvariety of a semiabelian variety $G$ over a finite field~$\Fq$ and $\Gamma$ is a finitely generated subgroup of $G$ that is invariant under the $q$-power Frobenius endomorphism $F$. That description is here made effective, and extended to arbitrary commutative algebraic groups~$G$ and arbitrary finitely generated $\zf$-submodules $\Gamma$. The approach is to use finite automata to give a concrete description of $X\cap\Gamma$. These methods and results have new applications even when specialised to the case when $G$ is an abelian variety over a finite field, $X\subseteq G$ a subvariety defined over a function field~$K$, and $\Gamma=G(K)$. As an application of the automata-theoretic approach, a dichotomy theorem is established for the growth of the number of points in $X(K)$ of bounded height. As an application of the effective description of $X\cap\Gamma$, decision procedures are given for the following three diophantine problems: Is $X(K)$ nonempty? Is it infinite? Does it contain an infinite coset?

  PublisherDOI

• On the Weierstrass Preparation Theorem over General Rings

  ArXiv.org · 2025-04-14

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We study rings over which an analogue of the Weierstrass preparation theorem holds for power series. We show that a commutative ring $R$ admits a factorization of every power series in $R[[x]]$ as the product of a polynomial and a unit if and only if $R$ is isomorphic to a finite product of complete local principal ideal rings. We also characterize Noetherian rings $R$ for which this factorization holds under the weaker condition that the coefficients of the series generate the unit ideal: this occurs precisely when $R$ is isomorphic to a finite product of complete local Noetherian integral domains. Beyond this, we investigate the failure of Weierstrass-type preparation in finitely generated rings and prove a general transcendence result for zeros of $p$-adic power series, producing a large class of power series over number rings that cannot be written as a polynomial times a unit. Finally, we show that for a finitely generated infinite commutative ring $R$, the decision problem of determining whether an integer power series (with computable coefficients) factors as a polynomial times a unit in $R[[x]]$ is undecidable.

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• Preperiodic points, finiteness, and structures of semigroups of algebraic morphisms

  ArXiv.org · 2025-08-12

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this paper, we explore a variety of finiteness questions for preperiodic points of morphisms. We begin by treating a group action analog of the Burnside problem for torsion groups using the p-adic arc method. We then prove some results connecting commonality of preperiodic points for elements of an automorphism group with structural properties of the group; these results are related to well-known results of Tits and Borel. We finish by proving some Northcott-type results for finite morphisms.

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• There are no good infinite families of toric codes

  Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A · 2025-01-17

  articleOpen access1st author

  Soprunov and Soprunova posed a question on the existence of infinite families of toric codes that are “good” in a precise sense. We prove that such good families do not exist by proving a more general Szemerédi-type result: for all c ∈ ( 0 , 1 ] and all positive integers N , subsets of density at least c in { 0 , 1 , … , N − 1 } n contain hypercubes of arbitrarily large dimension as n grows.

  PublisherDOI

• Noncommutative point spaces of symbolic dynamical systems

  Advances in Mathematics · 2025-03-29

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Pointed Hopf algebras, the Dixmier-Moeglin Equivalence and Noetherian group algebras

  ArXiv.org · 2025-07-31

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper addresses the interactions between three properties that a group algebra or more generally a pointed Hopf algebra may possess: being noetherian, having finite Gelfand-Kirillov dimension, and satisfying the Dixmier-Moeglin equivalence. First it is shown that the second and third of these properties are equivalent for group algebras $kG$ of polycyclic-by-finite groups, and are, in turn, equivalent to $G$ being nilpotent-by-finite. In characteristic $0$, this enables us to extend this equivalence to certain cocommutative Hopf algebras. In sections 3 and 4 of the paper finiteness conditions for group algebras are studied. Thus in $§$3 we examine when a group algebra satisfies the Goldie conditions, while in the final section we discuss what can be said about a minimal counterexample to the conjecture that if $kG$ is noetherian then $G$ is polycyclic-by-finite.

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• Enveloping Algebras of Derivations of Commutative and Noncommutative Algebras

  International Mathematics Research Notices · 2025-09-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Let $\Bbbk $ be a field of characteristic zero. Motivated by the fundamental question of whether it is possible for the universal enveloping algebra of an infinite-dimensional Lie algebra to be Noetherian, we study Lie algebras of derivations of associative algebras. The main result of this paper is that the universal enveloping algebra of the Lie algebra of derivations of a finitely generated $\Bbbk $-algebra is not Noetherian. This extends a result of Sierra and Walton on the Witt algebra, as well as a result of the second author on Krichever–Novikov algebras. We highlight that the result applies to derivations of both commutative and noncommutative algebras without restriction on their growth.

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• There are no good infinite families of toric codes

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-06-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Soprunov and Soprunova introduced the notion of a good infinite family of toric codes. We prove that such good families do not exist by proving a more general Szemerédi-type result: for all $c\in(0,1]$ and all positive integers $N$, subsets of density at least $c$ in $\{0,1,\dots,N-1\}^n$ contain hypercubes of arbitrarily large dimension as $n$ grows.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• M Dobson

  University of Notre Dame

  71 shared

• Whibley

  Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency Foundation

  62 shared

• William Μ. Calder

  62 shared

• M Williamson

  Griffith University

  62 shared

• Hon Treasurer

  62 shared

• Dragos Ghioca

  52 shared

• J. R. Postgate

  Harvard University Press

  46 shared

• Maurice Hutton

  45 shared