UCHRI Initiatives
In addition to its core programs and funding opportunities, UCHRI also works to develop programming and research initiatives around key or emerging topics in the humanities and that help to connect the humanities with other disciplines and audiences.
The UC California Studies Consortium supports collaborative research by UC faculty, graduate students, and their colleagues at other institutions as part of a new University-wide California Studies research initiative for the humanities, arts and social sciences. Embedded within UCHRI, the UC California Studies Consortium encourages wide-ranging approaches and innovative thinking and engagement about the state of our state and the state of the humanities within the University of California.
UCHRI’s initiative around Digital Media and Learning, part of an $85 million initiative sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation in 2006, is a multi-faceted project that explores the digital media practices that are fundamentally reshaping society in far-reaching ways, and enables breakthrough collaborations and conversations that lead to innovations in learning and public participation. The Digital Media and Learning Research Hub and its online portal dmlcentral.net, connects researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, industry, scholars and youth around the globe who are exploring the boundaries and possibilities of digital media and the networked world of the twenty-first century. The initiative also includes an annual DML Competition to find and inspire the most novel uses of new media in support of learning and an annual conference for scholars and practitioners in the field, focused on fostering interdisciplinary and participatory dialog and linking theory, empirical study, policy, and practice.
The Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT) is an intensive two-week summer program that convenes distinguished instructors with a group of faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, and public intellectuals from both the US and the international community to explore topics at the cutting edge of contemporary critical theory. In recent years, SECT has moved off the UCI campus to engage more intensively with global themes and communities.
The Humanities and Changing Conceptions of Work is a three-year multicampus research program, funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the UC Humanities Network. This initiative will explore and assess the critical historical and contemporary transformations in the meaning and experience of work. The project will also address how humanities practitioners can prepare students for the work that awaits them in 21st-century global society.