Two graduate students from the University of Illinois have been named 2016 Pre-Doctoral Fellows as part of a program by the Humanities Without Walls (HWW) Consortium to prepare students for careers both inside and outside the academy, or the university environment.
John Moore from the Department of English and Sara Thiel from the Department of Theatre, along with 28 other graduate students from the 15 universities that make up the HWW Consortium, will participate in a three-week long “alternative academic careers” workshop this summer.
The workshop, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will introduce opportunities and strategies for fellows to utilize their research interests and skills across various career paths. Graduate students will engage in intensive discussions with organizers of public humanities projects, leaders of university presses and learned societies, experts in the various domains of digital humanities, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations and holders of important non-faculty positions in colleges and universities.
Moore explained that the service and administrative work he’s done outside the academy has often allowed him to explore many of the same questions that drive his research and teaching.
“While I can imagine furthering these ideas in a traditional academic career, I am eager to explore alternative career paths, within and outside of the university, that would allow me to pursue these ideas at different scales,” Moore said. “By attending the workshop, I hope to learn strategies for developing a public humanities career in the non-profit and public sectors.”
Thiel also expressed an interest in working both in and outside academia.
“Much of my work seeks to make art and performance accessible at all levels. In so doing I hope to bridge the gap between the academy, public arts, and performance by discovering ways in which the interests of these seemingly disparate communities are deeply intertwined,” Thiel said. “I was drawn to the Humanities Without Walls Pre-Doctoral Summer Workshop because I want to learn how to develop and present my particular skill set to organizations with similar goals.”
The workshops, facilitated and directed by the Chicago Humanities Festival, will take place July 18 through August 5 in Chicago.
HWW is based at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois. It began two years ago with a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. HWW received a $4.2 million grant renewal from the Mellon Foundation in January.
