Innovation and Collaboration
Our granting programs empower researchers to fuse insights from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. In our interdisciplinary seminars, lectures, conferences, and working groups, faculty and graduate students find a supportive environment in which to present their work to peers who question and challenge it. Enriching Princeton’s intellectual community with distinguished visitors, our fellowship programs host scholars, journalists, artists, and writers from around the world.
Confronting Racism
The Council sponsors path-breaking projects that challenge systemic racism, along with the inequality and injustice it engenders. Partnering humanities scholars with artists, activists, scientists, and journalists, we deepen understanding, foster difficult conversations, and catalyze reform. Recent topics include racist policing and police violence, public health crises, educational disparities, and climate change.
Global Perspectives
Through multi-year research and teaching collaborations, the Council supports the development of new humanities networks across the world. With our advice and resources, faculty create Breakthrough Seminars reaching beyond the traditional classroom, or across disciplinary boundaries, to intensify and internationalize learning. Council funding enables students to conduct thesis research abroad, report news from overseas, and visit Athens or Rome to see the roots of Western civilization.
Public Humanities
In collaboration with local organizations and individuals, the Council invites people of all backgrounds to make discoveries, exchange ideas, and experience the excitement of cutting-edge research. In previous years, we have co-hosted the North American hub of Being Human, an international festival of the humanities. Through outreach grants, co-sponsorships, working groups, and innovation mini-grants, the Council funds work from faculty and graduate students who share their expertise with audiences beyond campus and address pressing societal concerns.
