When I first arrived at ASU in mid-Spring 2021, it was at a particularly uncertain phase of the pandemic, as teaching was exclusively online and faculty and staff were leaving for the summer break. By Fall of 2021, myself and the Associate Director Ron Broglio found ourselves with no staff and as a result inhibited in our capacity to plan future events and initiatives. But there’s always a silver lining. With the in-person return to campus, I had the time and opportunity to meet as many faculty and staff as I could, and to think deeply about the IHRs’ future direction in order to build a team of dynamic staff.
The new mission of the IHR is focused around research capacity building for the Humanities that will not only help build publications and grant expertise among faculty, but grow scholarly and intellectual impact.
Our new mission states: The Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) promotes inter- and cross-disciplinary research among faculty and students that help increase humanities impact, while also facilitating innovative research contributions to—and engaging industry, government, and community in—the real-world problems of our times.
Supporting this new mission also meant creating a number of new internal grants that provide opportunities for funding for all faculty who work in the Humanities. There is also a new Travel Grant as well as the Subvention Grant. We now have increased the number of grants from three to seven.
We are also refocusing programming away from a plethora of seminars and talks, to one that is more professionalised around building research capacity and knowledge among faculty. For example, this will entail a program of publishing workshops, (with editors from prestigious presses and journals); grant information workshops with the College Research Advancement Specialist (RAS) team; mentoring workshops by experienced faculty; and National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) workshops for all faculty, as well as workshops on writing for the public (translating research for a broader and non-academic community) and media training.
While the focus is on developing and growing research capacity, the IHR has not lost sight of other forms of Humanities impact that comes from high visibility. To this end my aim has been to raise the profile and public engagement with the institute through a focused digital engagement strategy, and high profile academic and industry public talks. For example, the Distinguished Lecture will continue, (and in late April we will have Distinguished Lectures by both Karen Barad and Vicki Kirby in conversation, exploring the ways in which the Humanities intersects with Science). But what is new here is what I have labelled the “IHR Online,” which features a number of online engagement strategies, the first one being a podcast series on the “Futures of Democracy” that will air on PBS on March 30. I interview a number of colleagues from ASU, including ASU President Michael Crow, Vice President and Vice Provost Peter Schlosser, Dean Patrick Kenney, Dean Jeffrey Cohen, professor Nina Berman, professor Richard Amesbury, and a number of others. The dates will be announced on the IHR website once the series is launched with PBS.
We have refreshed and updated our website: ihr.asu.edu with a user-friendly interface. The IHR calendar of events also has a monthly view of all upcoming Spring events.
All of what we are doing at the IHR is a team effort, and could not happen without very committed and dynamic staff members that include: Caden Gillespie (Business Operations Specialist, Sr.), Victoria Day (Assistant to the Director), Dr. Jacob Leveton (Program Coordinator), and Mina Lajevardi (Marketing & Communications Specialist, Sr). Currently, we are looking to fill the position of Research Advancement Specialist to help support our new research focus and to help you with all your external grants in the future. We will keep you posted!
The IHR is open, so don’t feel shy about asking us for help with your grants and research or just stopping by for a chat!
-Nicole Anderson