The University of Florida (UF) announces its inaugural Intersections Research-Into-Teaching Grants, organized by the UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere and made possible with $400,000 in funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Awards of $30,000 to four Intersections Groups will support UF faculty and staff working together across disciplines on research addressing major challenges, such as ethical decision-making, global Blackness and Latinx identity, mass incarceration, and technologies of space and time. Together, these collaborative, interdisciplinary groups unite 24 faculty and staff members and seven affiliate faculty, from 20 disciplines and six colleges across UF.
“Intersections Groups demonstrate the urgency for scholars to mobilize interdisciplinary collaboration with the humanities in order to respond to grand challenges,” says Prof. Barbara Mennel, Interim Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere. “Importantly, the Intersections Groups will translate scholarship into teaching to expose first-year students to the significance of the humanities in multiple thematic contexts.”
The groups will connect cultural, historical, and ethical inquiry based in the humanities to fields and professions including law, journalism and telecommunications, computer science and engineering, leadership and service, and education. Each awarded group has developed plans for research activities, such as studying common readings, hosting speaker series, partnering with community members for activities, and creating digital apps and other resources for UF students. The resulting research will inform the creation of innovative interdisciplinary undergraduate courses for the new UF Quest general education curriculum. Groups also will identify clusters of existing UF courses related to their research topics for undergraduate study and organize creative activities for students across these courses that engage them beyond the classroom.
More information can be found here.