The Humanities Council is pleased to award 28 new grants for innovation and collaboration in 2025-26. These projects, led by 36 faculty from across 28 academic departments and programs, will contribute to humanistic inquiry at the University and beyond. The Council will also continue to support seven previously awarded multi-year initiatives.
The new grants will help humanities scholars to generate pioneering research in emerging disciplines, utilize cutting-edge technologies, preserve materials and languages, and establish academic networks across the world.
This year’s grants will support projects including:
- An operatic theater work using newly invented sound technology
- A first-of-its-kind public research archive on migrant caravans
- The development of a video documenting a “walking history” of Harlem
- A yearlong celebration showcasing the many aspects of electronic music
- A new, one-week workshop exploring digital humanities in Chinese studies
- An oral history project featuring Princeton students in connection with artists, historians, and community members in Trenton
The awards include grants from the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project, which supports ideas that have the potential to change how the humanities are conceived and taught.
These grants also support projects that will enrich pedagogy at Princeton and promote comparative, global, and collaborative approaches to teaching, with the enhancement of new and existing undergraduate courses and graduate partnerships. In the upcoming academic year, students will attend operas in Austria, conduct hands-on learning with extended reality (XR) technology in New York City, collect data in Kenya to enhance representation of African languages, and connect with grassroots organizations in Jordan.
In addition to the Magic Projects, new Collaborative Humanities Grants will receive support from the Council to help faculty develop mutual areas of focus and to generate research or teaching in promising and underrepresented fields in the humanities. This year’s projects include new collaborations with scholars, practitioners, and universities in the United States and abroad.
The Council has additionally awarded special grants for initiatives, conferences, and workshops related to literature, music, and art.
MAGIC GRANTS
- No One is Forgotten (Live)
Elena Araoz (Lewis Center for the Arts) - The Harlem Walks Project
Wallace Best (Religion, African American Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies) - Caravan Archive Project
Amelia Frank-Vitale (Anthropology and SPIA); Grazzia Grimaldi (Latin American Studies) - Black in the World Archive and Lecture Series
Lorgia García Peña (Effron Center and African American Studies); Medhin Paolos (Lewis Center for the Arts) - Architecture Amid the Elements
Sylvia Lavin (Architecture) - Underrepresented Coin Finds from the Late Antique Heartland in the FLAME database
Alan Stahl (Classics and Princeton University Library) - Clay Has Memory: Generational Knowledge from Africa
James Steward (Princeton University Art Museum)
Course enrichment
- Salzburg Seminar on Opera, Politics and Cultural Diplomacy
Rubén Gallo (Spanish and Portuguese) - Recentering Jordan in the Anthropology of the Modern Middle East
Timothy Loh (Society of Fellows, Humanities Council, and Anthropology) - Immersive Realities in Architecture: Pioneering New Ways of World-Making
Daniela Mitterberger (Architecture) - Technology for African Languages in the Digital Age (PIIRS Global Seminar)
Mahiri Mwita (PIIRS); Happy Buzaaba (PIIRS) - The Princeton Electronic Music Festival
Jeff Snyder (Music)
Full descriptions of these projects can be found on the Magic Grant website.
TEAM-TEACHING GRANTS
- Women in European Cinema
Maria DiBattista (English and Comparative Literature); Gaetana Marrone Puglia (French and Italian) - Animal Music
Asif Ghazanfar (Neuroscience and Psychology); Gavin Steingo (Music) - Heraclitus, Char and Heidegger
Daniel Heller-Roazen (Comparative Literature); Sandra Bermann (Comparative Literature)
More information can be found on the Team-Teaching website.
COLLABORATIVE HUMANITIES GRANTS
- The Trenton/Princeton Oral History Play Project
Andrew Chignell (Religion and University Center for Human Values); Jane Cox (Lewis Center for the Arts); D. Vance Smith (English) - Interdisciplinary Working Group in Psychoanalytic Studies, the Humanities, and the Arts
Brigid Doherty (German and Art & Archaeology) - Turning the Global into the Local
Sophie Gee (English) - China Digital Humanities Workshop
Anna Shields (East Asian Studies); Paul Vierthaler (East Asian Studies) - Five-Day Intensive Courses on Topics in Near Eastern Studies
Jack Tannous (History and Hellenic Studies)
Full descriptions of these projects can be found on the Collaborative Humanities Grant website.
SPECIAL GRANTS
- Princeton Playhouse Ensembles Recording Project
Jane Cox (Lewis Center for the Arts); Solon Snider Sway (Lewis Center for the Arts and Music) - National Museum of African Art Student Exchange
Jane Cox (Lewis Center for the Arts) - Wandering Terrains: Embodying the Landscapes of Greece and Ireland
Peter Kelly (Classics) - Genius Loci
Erika Kiss (University Center for Human Values) - The Newberry-UChicago-Princeton-UPhilippines Symposium on the Spanish Colonial Philippines
Christina Lee (Spanish and Portuguese) - In the Flow: Religious Movements through Space, Time and Power
Nicole Myers Turner (Religion) - ESSAY WEEK
Christy Wampole (French and Italian) - Co-Reading Princeton’s Earliest Modern Indigenous Literature
Garry Sparks (Religion)
Full descriptions of these projects can be found on the Special Grants website.
ONGOING PROJECTS
- Island at the Crossroads: New Directions in Taiwan Studies
Janet Chen (History; East Asian Studies) - Cortona Colloquia on Latin Literature
Andrew Feldherr (Classics) - Princeton Food Project Phase II
Hanna Garth (Anthropology); Anne Cheng (English); Andrew Chignell (Religion); Daniel Rubenstein (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) - The Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavia: Philosophy, Science, Art
Hans Halvorson (Philosophy); Bridget Alsdorf (Art & Archaeology) - Princeton-LMU Munich Summer Seminar|
Joel Lande (German) - Aristotle in the Americas
Hendrik Lorenz (Philosophy) - The Animal Song Collective
Gavin Steingo (Music); Asif Ghazanfar (Neuroscience; Psychology)
The Humanities Council’s mission is to nurture the humanities locally and globally, engage diverse perspectives past and present, and enrich public dialogue with humanistic approaches.
The Council offers a wide array of funding opportunities for research, teaching, collaboration, innovation, and outreach. Information about eligibility and deadlines to apply can be found on the Council’s website.
