The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) is proud to announce the first participating projects and their associated institutions for our new research program, CHCI Initiatives. There are two inaugural Initiatives for 2025-2026: Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies, and Global Justice and Humanities Practices.

CHCI Initiatives build on the research collaboration model of CHCI developed over the last decade, upholding excellence in international collaboration while seeking to support a larger number of projects originating from the CHCI membership, and providing a flexible platform to feature a wider range of member-driven projects, from local programs to large-scale, multinational research projects.

These Initiatives represent CHCI's commitment to mobilizing the humanities in response to pressing global challenges, and we are excited to support these innovative projects and foster collaboration among researchers worldwide.

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.

Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies

The Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies Initiative brings together humanities centers to explore the impact of digital technologies on creative and intellectual life, cultural production, and the very notion of human agency. We sought projects that critically examine the intersections of AI, data, and digital systems with the humanities, considering how these technologies shape knowledge, ethics, and power.

The AI Paradigm: Between Personhood and Power

University of California Humanities Research Institute – University of California, Irvine

This project explores the philosophical, ethical, and sociopolitical dimensions of artificial intelligence. By examining AI’s impact on personhood, decision-making, and authority structures, the initiative raises urgent questions about the future of agency in a digitally mediated world. Through an interdisciplinary approach that brings together scholars from multiple fields, the project critically interrogates AI’s role in shaping knowledge, governance, and lived experience.

Political Software: Mapping Digital Worlds From Below

Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities – University of Washington

This project critically examines the political implications of digital infrastructures, investigating how digital mapping, platform economies, and algorithmic governance shape contemporary social relations. By connecting humanities scholarship with activist knowledge and digital justice frameworks, the initiative raises urgent questions about power, control, and agency in the digital age. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, it fosters a deeper understanding of the intersections between technology, politics, and human-centered computing.

Aesthetics, Art, and AI

Center for the Humanities – University of Wisconsin-Madison

This initiative investigates the relationship between AI and artistic practice, exploring how AI-generated aesthetics reshape creative production, authorship, and interpretation. By engaging scholars, artists, and technologists, the project examines the ethical and aesthetic implications of computational creativity, raising fundamental questions about artistic agency, originality, and the boundaries between human and machine-generated cultural production.

Public Trust in Data in the Age of Generative AI

Center for the Humanities – Oregon State University

This project examines the ethical implications of AI-generated information, with a focus on public trust, bias, misinformation, and transparency. By investigating how generative AI influences credibility, decision-making, and knowledge production, the initiative highlights the challenges of navigating digital environments. The project connects humanities research with pressing societal concerns, fostering public engagement and policy discussions around data ethics and trust.

Reading Between the Lines: An Interdisciplinary Glossary for Human-Centered AI

University of Connecticut Humanities Institute – University of Connecticut

This initiative rethinks AI terminology through a humanities lens, creating an interdisciplinary glossary that interrogates key concepts in artificial intelligence. By bringing together scholars from multiple disciplines, the project fosters a more nuanced and inclusive conversation about AI, critically examining how language and power shape technological systems and their societal impact.

Center for Liberal Arts and AI

Humanities Center – University of Richmond

This initiative fosters interdisciplinary dialogue between the humanities and AI research, critically examining the ethical, philosophical, and creative dimensions of artificial intelligence. By ensuring that humanistic inquiry plays a central role in shaping AI discourse, the project provides an essential space for exploring how AI technologies influence human understanding, decision-making, and the intersection of liberal arts with emerging technologies.

Critical Reorientation in the Age of Digital Technology: Intersections between Human Craft, Geopolitics, and Artistic Intervention

International Center for Cultural Studies – National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

This initiative examines the geopolitical dimensions of digital technology and artistic intervention. By exploring how digital infrastructures intersect with historical and contemporary power structures, the project raises urgent questions about technology, labor, and sovereignty in a rapidly shifting global landscape. Through humanities methodologies and artistic experimentation, the initiative rethinks digital craft within local and transnational contexts.

Language Theory & Artificial Intelligence Seminar and Symposium

Humanities Institute – Wake Forest University

This project explores the intersections of linguistics, artificial intelligence, and computational humanities. By critically engaging with the ways AI processes, translates, and generates language, the initiative raises urgent questions about meaning-making, bias, and machine cognition. Through interdisciplinary conversations between linguistics, philosophy, and computer science, the project deepens our understanding of how language functions in an AI-driven world.

OU Center for Creativity and Authenticity in AI Cultural Production

OU Arts & Humanities Forum – The University of Oklahoma

This initiative examines how AI technologies are transforming creative production, raising critical questions about authenticity, authorship, and artistic agency. By bringing together scholars, artists, and technologists, the project explores the evolving role of human creativity in an AI-driven world and fosters interdisciplinary discussions on the challenges and possibilities of machine-generated cultural production.

Models-Scale-Context: AI and the Humanities | Collaborative Humanities Lab

Cogut Institute for the Humanities – Brown University

This project investigates how artificial intelligence operates across different scales—from individual creativity to broad societal contexts. By examining AI models’ engagement with language, perception, and meaning-making, the initiative explores the intersection of computational methods and humanities inquiry. Through theoretical analysis and practical experimentation, the project bridges critical AI studies with interdisciplinary research in the humanities.

Global Justice and Humanities Practices

The Global Justice and Humanities Practices Initiative was created to bring humanistic research into urgent dialogue with contemporary struggles for justice, equity, and collective memory. We sought projects that not only examine justice from an academic perspective but also engage with the lived experiences of communities facing historical and ongoing injustices.

Just and Inclusive Climate Havens and the Humanities: an Interdisciplinary Symposium

Humanities Center – University of Rochester

This project takes an interdisciplinary approach to climate migration, engaging the humanities in addressing the critical issue of climate havens. By bringing together scholars, activists, and policymakers, the symposium explores the social, historical, and ethical dimensions of relocation due to climate change. The initiative fosters research that is both deeply analytical and action-oriented, contributing to broader conversations on climate justice and urban resilience.

Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District

Willson Center for Humanities and Arts – University of Georgia

This project is committed to cultural preservation and community engagement in historic justice, focusing on the Penn Center, a vital site in African American history and the Civil Rights Movement. By amplifying local histories and fostering public dialogue, the initiative highlights the role of historical memory in contemporary social justice efforts. The project brings together humanities scholars, local communities, and activists to explore the ongoing significance of this landmark and its legacy.

Repair

Humanities Research Center – Rice University

This initiative explores repair as both an intellectual framework and a material practice, engaging with historical violence, social restoration, and material reconstruction. By examining repair across artistic, technological, and social dimensions, the project fosters critical discussions on resilience, memory, and justice. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, it connects scholarship, creative practice, and community engagement, rethinking repair as a response to structural injustice.

Environmental (In)justice: Project Jadar and Lithium Frenzy

Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory – University of Belgrade

This project critically examines environmental justice in the context of lithium mining and resource extraction in Serbia. By analyzing the social, economic, and ecological consequences of Project Jadar, it highlights the intersection of environmental policy, corporate influence, and local activism. The initiative centers the voices and perspectives of affected communities, aligning with broader efforts to integrate humanistic inquiry into contemporary justice movements and foster meaningful dialogue around extractivism and resistance.

Justice-in-Education Initiative

Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities – Columbia University

This initiative is dedicated to educational justice and the integration of humanities into carceral education. By offering humanities-based courses and programs for incarcerated individuals and returning citizens, it demonstrates how education can serve as a transformative tool for empowerment and social reintegration. The project bridges scholarship, community engagement, and activism, challenging systemic barriers to education while fostering intellectual exchange and public discourse on justice in higher education.

Mass Migrations, Personal Voices: Latin American Women Migrants Write Their Stories

Obermann Center for Advanced Studies – University of Iowa

This project explores creative writing as a tool for empowerment and historical documentation. By working directly with Venezuelan migrant women in Uruguay to collect and share personal migration narratives, it highlights the power of storytelling in confronting displacement, gendered migration experiences, and the fight for social belonging. The initiative merges literary humanities with lived experience, creating a model for humanities-driven engagement in migrant justice.

Carceral Liberalism in an Age of Fascism

Institute for the Humanities – University of Illinois at Chicago

This project interrogates the intersection between liberal governance and carceral state practices. By examining how legal, political, and social institutions deploy liberal rhetoric to justify surveillance, incarceration, and repression, it provides an essential critique of contemporary governance. Through a commitment to bridging scholarship and activism, the initiative offers a humanities-based framework for understanding the expansion of punitive state mechanisms in democratic societies.

Aesthetics and the Technologies of ‘Repair’

Institute for the Arts and Humanities – UNC-Chapel Hill

This initiative engages with repair as both a conceptual and material practice, investigating its role across artistic, technological, and social dimensions. Through interdisciplinary discussions on resilience, memory, and justice, the project connects scholarship, creative practice, and community engagement to rethink how repair functions as a response to historical violence and structural injustice.

Alex Storytellers Hub: Community Pedagogy

Mandel Center for the Humanities – Brandeis University

This initiative is dedicated to community-centered storytelling and preserving local histories in Alexandra Township, South Africa. By amplifying the voices of marginalized communities and fostering intergenerational knowledge exchange, it aligns humanities scholarship with engaged, justice-driven practice. The project integrates oral history, digital humanities, and local cultural traditions to create a meaningful space for self-representation and collective memory.

Water Commons: The Living Legacy of the Colorado River

Humanities Institute – Arizona State University

This project takes an interdisciplinary approach to the Colorado River as a shared resource with profound ecological, cultural, and historical significance. By engaging scholars, Indigenous communities, environmental activists, and policy experts, it fosters crucial conversations about sustainability, historical dispossession, and the ethics of water management. The initiative situates environmental justice within a humanities framework, amplifying underrepresented voices and promoting meaningful public engagement.

Global Racisms, Cold War Humanism, and the Imagination of Just Futures

Institute for Comparative Literature and Society – Columbia University

This initiative critically examines the history of racial justice struggles across multiple geopolitical contexts. By exploring how Cold War-era humanist discourse shaped and responded to systemic racisms globally, it offers a timely intervention in the study of racial inequality. The project bridges historical analysis with contemporary struggles for justice, mobilizing global intellectual networks to reimagine more equitable futures.

Displaced Scholars in Residence: A Collaboration Between U-M’s Institute for the Humanities and the Academy in Exile

Institute for the Humanities – University of Michigan

This initiative provides refuge and research opportunities for displaced scholars facing threats to their academic freedom. In partnership with the Academy in Exile, the project offers vital institutional support for scholars forced to leave their home countries due to political repression, war, or persecution. It fosters intellectual exchange, integrates scholars into new academic networks, and amplifies their voices in global conversations on justice and displacement.

Global Justice: Historical Present, Imagined Futures

Aydelotte Foundation – Swarthmore College

This initiative engages with contemporary crises of global justice by bringing together scholars, artists, and public intellectuals. It examines the disintegration of the so-called liberal world order, the resurgence of global fascist movements, and the enduring impact of colonial violence. The project creates a sustained platform for analyzing systemic inequality while imagining possibilities for solidarity and reparative futures.