Through a yearly competition, C21 constitutes a group of six to eight UWM faculty, plus at least one external faculty, whose research relates to the Center’s annual or biennial research theme. Fellowships are awarded to support research projects in the humanities, which include, but are not limited to, philosophy, history, literature, religious studies, and art history. Proposals employing humanistic approaches from the social and natural sciences and the arts are also welcome.

C21 provides office space on the ninth floor of Curtin Hall and research assistance (e.g., library work and duplication), as resources permit. Fellows are expected to participate in bi-weekly seminars and public programs throughout the year, and to present the results of their research in a public forum. Public programming consists of lectures, colloquia, and symposia by visiting scholars related to C21’s theme, as well as its annual conference.

The Center for 21st Century Studies spearheads a multidisciplinary research initiative that addresses one or more of the transdisciplinary challenges of 21st century studies.

A substantive, two-year award will be made to a collaborative research project which brings together UWM researchers from the Center’s traditional constituencies in the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences with researchers from natural, physical, and quantitative social sciences. Other smaller awards may be given to encourage promising projects for future development. This initiative is designed to prompt researchers from any disciplinary background to think in unexpected and untried ways about working with researchers in disciplines whose methodology, content, and institutional practices are unfamiliar to them. Although this is not the kind of research with which most academics have experience, we are convinced that this kind of research will become increasingly prevalent and necessary in the 21st century. The aim of these awards is not only to generate new research approaches to the complex problems of the 21st century but also to provide models for how researchers from disciplines that do not have a history of collaboration can work together to meet the complex, heterogeneous challenges of the 21st century.

Please consult our Transdisciplinary Challenge pages for more details and information about previous awardees.

The Center is always interested to hear from UWM faculty about their proposals for conferences, symposia, and other multi-speaker events. Such proposals help the Center further its mission of promoting cutting-edge research and encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries in the humanities, arts, and humanistically informed social sciences. Topics should have the potential both of appealing to a broad range of researchers in and around UWM and of having a wider impact on scholarly debates in the humanities nationally and internationally. Any topic that falls within the humanities, broadly conceived, has interdisciplinary appeal, and does not duplicate recent conferences may be proposed.

The 2013-14 research theme is "Changing Climates"

To assist faculty in their pursuit of externally funded research projects, the Center coordinates an ongoing grant writing group for faculty in the humanities and social sciences. The overarching goal of these group meetings is to increase the number and quality of grant submissions by faculty in the humanities and social sciences, two broad areas that are generally under-funded by external sources. Toward this end, the workshop is intended to:

Provide information about internal and external grant opportunities and application processes

Improve the quality of writing and thereby the chances for success in achieving funding

Workshops meet four times per year, with ad hoc sessions called for review of each other’s grant proposals.

Grant writing group (PDF)

For further information, contact John Blum