C21 Selected to Participate in Major Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant
From 2015-17, C21 participated in a major new grant awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), of which C21 is a member. The $1.35 million grant was awarded for the second phase of Integrating the Humanities across National Boundaries, an initiative designed to foster new forms of collaborative research and partnerships among the organization’s international members via two pilot projects.
C21 was one of four CHCI member centers and institutes that led the research on one of the pilot projects, Integrative Graduate Humanities Research Education and Training (IGHERT). The project brought together faculty, doctoral students, and post-doctoral scholars in a series of structured collaborations to undertake jointly mentored, international research. Joining C21 in the project were the Institute for Humanities Research, University of California, Santa Cruz; International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Justus Liebig University in Giessen; and Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra. Focusing on the interdisciplinary theme of indigeneity, together they engaged graduate students in a series of collaborative training and research activities and tested, refined, and assessed a scalable model of skill training and digital archiving that can be applied in multiple contexts and to multiple themes.
IGHERT also aimed to attune the participants to the larger public contexts in which expert knowledge in the humanities is meaningful and to equip them with the written and oral skills necessary to communicate with these public constituencies more effectively. C21 supported two doctoral researchers and two faculty mentors to participate in the three-year project. Doctoral students received two years of 12-month dissertation fellowship support plus three years of travel expenses to participate in the IGHERT sessions that wre held at each of the participating centers. In August 2016 C21 hosted a summer workshop for all of the project’s international participants, which focused on the question of human and nonhuman belonging. The workshop featured several public presentations which were open to UWM and local community.
About the CHCI
Established in 1988, the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) is an international organization headquartered at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. It is a network for the circulation of information, ideas, and best practices related to the programmatic and organizational dimensions of humanities centers and institutes. CHCI is currently comprised of more than 180 member and affiliate organizations in 23 countries and 46 US states. CHCI members are engaged in a wide range of programs, including research support, public humanities programs, fellowship programs, and advocacy on issues of educational and cultural policy, digital humanities programs, partnerships with arts organizations, and the development and maintenance of research collections. Many CHCI members are powerful agents of growth, change, and transformative interdisciplinary research on their campuses and within their communities. More information on CHCI can be found at http://chcinetwork.org.
Top image: A sheet used in the construction of globes from the French company Girard & Barrère. Crossett Library, Bennington College. Flickr, Creative Commons.
Bottom image: Narrow slice of 1918 world map. Geographical Publishing Company. In the Digital Map Collection of the American Geographical Society Library.