Welcome

The Humanities Collaboratory is a bold investment by the university in collaborative, multi-generational, inclusive and transformational humanities scholarship that engages compelling questions for the academy and the world beyond. Born in the Office of the Provost, housed in LSA, and located in the Hatcher Graduate Library, the Humanities Collaboratory is building permanent research development infrastructure to support humanities research at the University of Michigan. We are also working to develop tools for assessment and we are continuing to give 5×5 and Proposal Development grants to support innovative and ambitious forms of humanities scholarship. Our mission is to give humanists access to significant resources to enable new kinds of work on the remarkable diversity of human experience across the globe.

… work in the humanities is critical to living in a world that’s increasingly interdependent and complex and often mysterious.”

—Sara Blair, Patricia S. Yaeger Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature, Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs

Projects

Praise for Being Human During COVID (2021):

“Highly recommended… Instructors in many disciplines, but particularly those interested in digital humanities, may want to use selections from the book in their classes. General readers may find comfort and inspiration in these authors’ varied responses to the global pandemic.”

— Review in Choice vol. 59, no.10 (June 2022), by A. White, Grand Valley State University

News

  • The Ambivalence Project Celebrates Launch of Guidelines

    The Ambivalence Project Celebrates Launch of Guidelines


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    The Ambivalence Project, partnering with Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, has launched their messaging guide, “Ambivalence as an Opportunity for Social Change.” It can be downloaded for free at: http://goodwinsimon.com/ambivalence. The Ambivalence Project, led by P.I. Valerie Traub, was composed of 5 faculty, 2 graduate students, and 1 staff person located in LSA and the Medical……

  • Inside the Launch of the Black Washtenaw County Website

    Inside the Launch of the Black Washtenaw County Website


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    The Black Washtenaw County Team (BWC) launched their website, the Black Washtenaw County Collaboratory, in early December, marking a major achievement for the group in making their project accessible to the general public.  Meghana Tummala, a Wallenberg Fellow and recent Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning graduate, joined the team over a year ago.……

  • New 5×5 Team, Public Facing Studies of Religion

    New 5×5 Team, Public Facing Studies of Religion


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    The Public Facing Studies of Religion team is comprised of faculty members with backgrounds in a variety of religious scholarly studies. They will meet to share and analyze techniques for disseminating public facing versions of research on religion. Topics they will discuss include the phenomena of scholarship on religion being mistaken as proselytizing and the complications of pressures inherent to religious……

I’m very excited to have that commitment from my own institution, from the University of Michigan, to do humanities research in a collaborative format.”

— Johannes von Moltke, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Professor of Film, Television and Media

5×5 Incubator Grants

  • New 5×5 Team, Public Facing Studies of Religion

    New 5×5 Team, Public Facing Studies of Religion


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    The Public Facing Studies of Religion team is comprised of faculty members with backgrounds in a variety of religious scholarly studies. They will meet to share and analyze techniques for disseminating public facing versions of research on religion. Topics they will discuss include the phenomena of scholarship on religion being mistaken as proselytizing and the complications of pressures inherent to religious……

  • Media, Technology, Geopolitics and Social Change in the BRICS+ Countries

    Media, Technology, Geopolitics and Social Change in the BRICS+ Countries


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    We welcome Media, Technology, Geopolitics and Social Change in the BRICS+ Countries team to the Collaboratory with a 5×5 Incubator grant. With an interdisciplinary approach to media, this team will focus on BRICS+ countries – namely India, China, Russia and Nigeria – to assess how uses, practices, and understandings of media, art, and technology reproduce……

  • Documenting Endangered Languages

    Documenting Endangered Languages


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    The team, as a recent recipient of a 5×5 Incubator grant, will focus on language documentation, especially endangered languages, which includes over 90% of the languages in the world today. The team’s goal is to create a critical mass of synergy and brainstorm on major issues in language documentation, such as a practical protocol for language……

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