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Humanities for the People

Research Excellence | Strategy 6: Collaborative Clusters
Theme: Collaboration
Dr. Mary Chapman with the Public Humanities Hub’s Research Assistants: Alyssa Sys de Jesus and Teilhard Paradela.

Earlier this year, UBC launched its Public Humanities Hub – a three-year pilot project aimed at supporting collaborative research among Humanities scholars while also highlighting and developing public-facing research in the Humanities.

“The impetus behind the Public Humanities movement at UBC is to give scholars an opportunity to participate more fully in the mobilization of knowledge — in the sharing of their own ideas,” says Dr. Mary Chapman, the hub’s academic director.

She adds that society has a tremendous appetite for more public-facing research, in large part because the world increasingly needs people trained in the humanities to help citizens to evaluate and to re-imagine the human experience and to work on collective solutions.

Developed in collaboration between the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Education, the Peter A. Allard School of Law, the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, the Hub is supported by UBC’s Academic Excellence Funds. It also supports UBC’s work to enable interdisciplinary clusters of research excellence across the university (Strategy 6: Collaborative Clusters).

Learn more about the Public Humanities Hub and how the public humanities movement has gained considerable momentum in the last decade on the Faculty of Arts’ website.  

“Society is asking for humanities scholars to weigh in on the ethics of AI, on the perpetuation of fake news, on some of the broader questions about identity and nation. Our timing is perfect.”

Dr. Mary Chapman, Academic Director of the UBC Public Humanities Hub