Introducing Initiatives

CHCI invites centers and institutes around the world to join Initiatives that mobilize the transformative power of the humanities to address topics of global and urgent social import. CHCI will coordinate the international networks of projects and programs formed around each Initiative and leverage their outputs to advocate for global humanities research within and beyond academia.

There are two inaugural Initiatives for 2025-2026: Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies, and Global Justice and Humanities Practices.

Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies

In an era where digital technologies increasingly shape human interaction, knowledge creation, and culture, the CHCI Initiative: Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies brings together humanities centers to explore how we craft meaning in a digital world. This initiative focuses on critical questions surrounding the intersections of technology and humanity, investigating the impacts of artificial intelligence, big data, and digital disinformation on creativity, literacy, and critical thinking.

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Global Justice and Humanities Practices

The CHCI Initiative: Global Justice and Humanities Practices mobilizes the humanities to address urgent social justice issues, from historical injustices to contemporary struggles for equality and human rights. This initiative calls for research projects and programs that apply humanistic methods to critical global issues such as migration, environmental justice, and the legacies of colonialism.

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Participate

All CHCI members currently running, planning, or seeking to develop a program or research project related to one of the Initiative themes are encouraged and welcome to join. Participating centers and institutes will be invited to join CHCI-facilitated activities and events hosted over the course of each Initiative. All interested centers and institutes are also welcome to apply for financial support from CHCI. 

Info Session

CHCI Executive Director Guillaume Ratel and President Stephen Best hosted an online information session on October 16, 2024 to answer questions from interested centers and institutes. (Youtube)

Join the Initiatives

About

With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Initiatives build on the research collaboration model of CHCI’s Global Humanities Institutes (GHIs). Since 2018, GHIs have supported interdisciplinary approaches and multinational partnerships focused on global issues such as the crises of democracy, advocacy for climate justice, the legacies of extractivism, the complexities of migration, and issues of language and translation. 

Initiatives maintain the core principle of excellence in international collaboration while seeking to support a larger number of projects originating from the CHCI membership, and providing a more flexible platform to feature a wider range of member-driven projects, from local programs to large-scale, multinational research projects. CHCI Initiatives mobilize the rich potential that exists within the global humanities community at large to its full extent to address pressing global challenges.

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