How Humanities Research Funding Works: A Budgeting Workshop

November 13, 2025
9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET / 5:00pm GMT
Zoom registration
Pre-registration required
Bring your broad budget details and challenges to discuss privately in breakout rooms

In this virtual event for CHCI members, board member Christopher Newfield will review the basic mechanisms of humanities funding at U.S. universities, briefly compare that model to the UK’s, and suggest necessary changes that humanities center and institute directors should consider advocating for.

Christopher Newfield is Director of Research at the Independent Social Research Foundation in London. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the Immediate Past President of the Modern Language Association.

Schedule:

• Introductions (5 minutes)

• Christopher Newfield presentation (40 minutes)

• Breakout rooms (30 minutes)

• Open discussion / Q&A (15 minutes)

Suggested readings:

• Clifford Ando, “Reorg 101: The Past and Future of the Race to the Bottom,” The Chicago Maroon, July 26, 2025.

• Clifford Ando, “West Virginia Chicago is happening to you. The fight for the modern university,” The Chicago Maroon, January 14, 2024.

• Kylie Message-Jones, “The Snuffing of a World-Renown Humanities Centre,” Remaking II: Long Revolution, July 10, 2025

• Christopher Newfield, “Chicago’s Gift to Trump,” Remaking II: Long Revolution, August 24, 2025

• Christopher Newfield, “The University’s False Economy: UC Irvine Part 1,” Remaking II: Long Revolution, July 8, 2025

• Christopher Newfield, “Trouble at the Irvine Core: UC Irvine Part 2,” Remaking II: Long Revolution, July 10, 2025

• Christopher Newfield, “Humanities Decline in Darkness: How Humanities Research Funding Works,” Public Humanities Journal, Cambridge University Press, December 23, 2024.

This event is organized by the CHCI Administration Network, a home for humanities center and institute staff to discuss issues of administration, including leadership and best practices in operations. We welcome all administrative staff, including but not limited to associate and managing directors, assistant directors, communications and program officers and staff, and also directors in administrative roles.

For questions, please write to CHCI Membership and Diversity Officer Aaron Fai (afai@berkeley.edu).