Research Plus

Julia Lupton
Humanities Commons
UC Irvine

Humanities research is often viewed as “inexpensive” – not requiring lab equipment, teams of postdocs and graduate students, or specialized buildings. Yet, humanities scholarship does require financial investment for both the research process and products. In the humanities, research is often identified with the solitary process of writing rather than a longer cycle of ideational development that involves research exchange and relationship-building (conferences, symposia, reading groups, experimental and team teaching), the iterative crafting of compelling project statements (for grants, book proposals, and formal and informal presentations), and dissemination (in scholarly and public settings and on a range of platforms). This project envisions research development holistically, across the life of a project and in the service of fostering a thriving research culture. In addition to thinking conceptually and programmatically about research development as a set of skills and capacities, the project also benefits from gaining additional training and knowledge of best practices in these areas to facilitate humanities work. Through webinars, an online resource toolkit, a UCHRI-hosted humanities funders’ summit, and a one-day workshop, this collaborative project increased the capacity of humanities centers to support faculty research across the UC system.