The selected projects feature “an incredible array of bold, creative proposals and ideas,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
Legacy: Understanding Residential Schools Through Indigenous Art with Literature Lecturer, Prof Caitlyn Doyle
Legacy: Understanding Residential Schools Through Indigenous Art is a digital platform, research and teaching aide designed to facilitate access to Indigenous-created literature and media arts addressing the legacy of the American and Canadian Indian boarding school systems. The enriched database will include subject-specific descriptions of the resources, suggestions for further research, interviews with artists, and prototypes of lesson plans. The platform’s modular design will allow it to be responsive to the unique needs of a wide variety of users in interdisciplinary contexts, offering a streamlined user-friendly entry point to an understudied and rapidly transforming field.
Learn more about this year’s Humanities Cultivation Fund projects.
The MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) has announced funding for thirty-two projects.
MITHIC launched in 2024 as a new presidential-level initiative that aims to elevate human-centered research and teaching, and bring together scholars in the humanities, arts, and social sciences with their colleagues across the Institute.
“We designed MITHIC to help MIT faculty in human-centered fields ‘go big’ – to explore the frontiers of knowledge in their fields, connect across disciplines, and devise new solutions for global challenges,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “A tall order, but faculty jumped at the chance, offering an incredible array of bold, creative proposals and ideas.”
A call for proposals went out in Fall 2024 and yielded 89 submissions.
“These are very exciting projects, which highlight the importance of cross-school collaboration and the extraordinary potential of human-centered research at MIT,” says MITHIC co-chair Agustín Rayo, Kenan Sahin Dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and professor of philosophy. “I can’t wait for the entire community to hear about some of the research being developed through MITHIC.”
Recipients received awards from one of three funds: the SHASS+ Connectivity Fund, the Humanities Cultivation Fund, and the SHASS Education Innovation Fund. The SHASS+ Connectivity Fund pairs a project lead in SHASS with another project lead from across the Institute with the goal of achieving large-scale, long-term impact. The interdisciplinary teams include representation from SHASS, the School of Architecture and Planning, the School of Engineering, the School of Science, and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
The Humanities Cultivation Fund supports ambitious endeavors in the arts and humanities, and the SHASS Education Innovation Fund supports projects that will help create transformative educational experiences and practices in SHASS for MIT students.
“It is wonderful to see the tremendous enthusiasm for MITHIC reflected in the incredible range of submissions for the first call for proposals,” adds MITHIC co-chair Anantha Chandrakasan, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, Dean of the School of Engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “The projects will advance core humanities research and education as well as build important bridges between SHASS and the rest of campus. I’m confident we will see exciting cross-disciplinary work come out of this set and look forward to the collaborations’ impacts.”
The funding runs for one year, beginning January 1, 2025, through December 31, 2025. Some of the projects are new initiatives, while others are ongoing.
“MITHIC is taking a ground up approach towards identifying faculty research priorities. Some of the funded projects are aligned with other presidential priorities, such as climate change and generative AI, while all reflect the fascinating diversity of intellectual passions that unite MIT’s faculty, teaching staff, and research staff,” says SHASS Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives Keeril Makan, MITHIC Faculty Lead and the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor.
February 3, 2025 | Written by Benjamin Daniel: Read more here…