UBC established Public Humanities Hubs (PHH) to provide support specific to collaborative research among humanists. Supported by UBC's Academic Excellence Funds, the three-year pilot project highlighted and developed public-facing research in the Humanities.
The Hubs are the result of wide consultation with UBC Humanities researchers, and has been developed to complement the existing research clusters competitions to provide support fitting the nature of collaboration within the Humanities.
The development of this pilot was a result of 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, with the support of the offices of the President, the Provost and VP Academic, and the VP Research and Innovation. It will support a number of strategies identified in UBC’s Strategic Plan, including Research Excellence Strategy 6: Collaborative Clusters; Strategy 7: Research Support; Strategy 9: Knowledge Exchange and Strategy 10: Research Culture.
Vancouver Campus
UBCV’s Public Humanities Hub is a three-year pilot project established in 2019 to foster and support collaborative research and to highlight and develop public-facing research in the Humanities in Arts, Law, and Education, at UBCV. The PHH in Vancouver operates under the lead of Dr. Mary Chapman as academic director and a steering committee.
The PHH offers a number of programs including:
- Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship
- Public Humanities Hub Research Cluster grants
- Public Scholarship Series
- #HumaniSeries (a social media campaign to document the response of UBC public humanities scholars to COVID-19)
- An events calendar that lists all public humanities-related UBC events
PHH website | PHH Facebook | PHH YouTube
Okanagan Campus
The PHH at UBC Okanagan is led by Dr. Brigitte Le Normand, Academic Director of the Public Humanities Hub at UBC Okanagan.
Planned activities at the UBC Okanagan campus include:
- Hosting a major Public Humanities conference in Kelowna (postponed to the summer of 2021)
- A joint-fellowship competition that will enable UBC Okanagan scholars to collaborate with fellows at other institutions on a year-long Humanities project with clear potential for impact in the Okanagan Valley
- Implementing and adjudicating an annual research funding competition to support groups pursuing thematic research interests
- Supporting a Graduate Research Assistant to organize exchanges and explore the successes of other campuses that have achieved high international rankings in the Humanities
- Building new interdisciplinary research connections
- Identifying best practices in international capacity-building within the Humanities
- Providing opportunities to promote and mobilize Humanities research