High Meadows Environmental Institute and Princeton Humanities Initiative Announce New Partnership
The Princeton Humanities Initiative (PHI) and HMEI are pleased to announce a multi-faceted partnership to enhance and build new capacity for environmental research at Princeton. The partnership reflects a commitment to integrating the diverse fields of knowledge – scientific and technological as well as social, cultural, and ethical – needed to address some of the most significant global challenges of our time. The collaboration is designed to support new directions in research, teaching, and public engagement.
The partnership encompasses new ventures that will encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue and scholarly inquiry into the human dimensions of environmental change.
These include:
- The creation of an Environmental Gallery and Exhibitions Specialist position to lead the artistic and intellectual direction and operational function of the new environmental art gallery in Briger Hall. The specialist will develop exhibitions and programs that engage with pressing environmental issues while fostering meaningful connections to the research and teaching priorities of HMEI and PHI and the broader University community. This role will also contribute to the ongoing development of a nexus of research focused on visual and material culture and the environment at Princeton.
- Supporting a regular forum for discussing works-in-progress by faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students pursuing research in the environmental humanities, which will create a platform for testing and refining new scholarly projects. The series—co-sponsored by HMEI, PHI, and the Humanities Council—will foster an interdisciplinary community of scholars and raise the visibility of research that creates new knowledge and insight about the human dimensions of environmental change.
- Building on ideas and new research directions that emerge from the HMEI-PHI research community, the development of new interdisciplinary research projects via PHI’s Incubator program. The first of these projects, already in development, will bridge the Initiative’s “Media & Meaning” theme with environmental studies through a focus on climate media, storytelling, and data.
“The Humanities Initiative is thrilled to expand our partnership with HMEI, one of the academy’s premiere sites for high-impact, interdisciplinary research and teaching on the environment,” said Rachael DeLue, director of the Princeton Humanities Initiative. “Addressing the significant environmental challenges we face today requires the expertise of many different fields of study. Scientific knowledge is of course essential, and so is an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical factors that have been causal in creating the current ecological crisis and that have shaped the ways different communities react and adapt to change. Through this partnership, we hope to amplify the already impressive contributions of humanists to HMEI’s work and create the conditions for exceptional research of the sort our present moment demands and on which the future depends.”
“At HMEI, we are excited to partner with the university’s Humanities Initiative, an ambitious new endeavor on the Princeton campus. Together, we seek to push through traditional disciplinary boundaries and create potential for groundbreaking work at the intersection of science and the humanities,” said Gabriel Vecchi, Professor of Geosciences and Director, HMEI. “This bold and exciting collaboration builds upon HMEI’s longstanding commitment to the humanities as integral to the interdisciplinary study of environmental subjects and will further our ability to understand and address today’s most pressing environmental challenges.”
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