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Public Humanities Collaborative

The Public Humanities Collaborative (PHC) is a summer research opportunity that brings together students, faculty, and individuals and organizations in Hartford to work on public humanities: the study of how people interpret stories of our human experience. The PHC is a component of Trinity College’s Summer Research Program. The program funds between 10 to 16 students per summer.

In the PHC, students work approximately 30 hours/week with faculty and Hartford-area community partners on humanities-oriented research (in support of publications such as journal articles or book chapters) and public humanities projects (such as an oral history collection, interactive website, community discussion, exhibit, public performance, etc.). Faculty and community partners can choose to apply together to co-supervise students on a collaborative project OR submit separate proposals where students will split their weekly time between the faculty project and community partners project. Students, faculty, and Hartford humanities partners will attend a weekly lunch and workshop on topics such as community engagement ethics, humanities research methods, digital storytelling and digital humanities tools, presenting work to academic and public audiences, and careers and graduate education in the humanities.

Students receive on-campus housing and the regular summer research stipend for 10 weeks of work (paid out in installments). At the end of the program community partners and faculty supervisors will receive stipends for mentoring students and participating in weekly workshops.

Community Partners and Faculty:
  • Community partners: Proposals for Summer 2025 are due Monday February 24th here.
  • Faculty partners: Proposals for Summer 2025 are due Monday February 24th here.

To help with your proposal you can view project summaries from 2022 here and 2023 here. The PHC administrators will review proposals and applications to identify matching interests for potential teams. Due to a limited number of slots in the program, we may not be able to accept all proposals we receive. First-time applicants will be given preference, though returning applicants are still encouraged to apply.

Students:

Student applications for summer 2024 are now closed. Check back in March 2025 for Summer 2025 applications. PHC is a competitive application process. We encourage applications from first generation, under-represented, and other students with demonstrated financial need, for whom socioeconomic status has prevented them from engaging with summer research opportunities.

If you have any questions, please contact PHC co-directors Erica Crowley, Director of CHER Academic Programs or Mary Mahoney, Digital Scholarship Strategist, or CHER Faculty Lead Hilary Wyss.

Summer 2025 projects will be listed below in March.

Other past projects
Migration, Housing, and Organizing with the West Indian Foundation and Anti-Colonial Thought with Professor Maurice Wade

In the video below, Esther Appiah ’21 and Ali Kara ’20 discuss their work with community partner Fiona Vernal of the West Indian Social Club/West Indian Foundation. The 1940s and 50s wartime labor needs brought thousands of migrants to Hartford, and West Indians in particular stood out for high home ownership rates, entrepreneurial endeavors, educational attainments, and eventual flight to the suburbs. Unfortunately there have been few ways for the public to engage with this history in Hartford except for a few times a year during the West Indian and Puerto Rican parades. As a means of allowing the community to create and engage with this knowledge, Esther and Ali worked with Dr. Vernal and other Hartford community partners on an exhibit that tracks migration, housing, and community organizing among African American, Puerto Rican, and West Indian migrants (see more about their community partner project here). For their faculty project, Esther and Ali worked with Professor Maurice Wade to conduct primary source research on anti-colonialism to add to the Caribbean Anti-Colonial Thought Archive,  where they used Timeline and WordPress to add information and resources to the website itself.

“What We Wore” Exhibit with the Amistad Center for Arts and Culture and Rethinking Urbanism and Urban Responses to Immigration with Professors Garth Myers and Abigail Fisher Williamson

Aboubacar Bakayoko ’20 and Lucy Pereira ’20 worked with the Amistad Center for Arts and Culture to develop a digital timeline, seen in the video below, for the “What We Wore” exhibit. This is a community sourced textile exhibition which features clothing showing another side of African American history in Hartford. Take a look at the full timeline here: . Aboubacar also worked with Professor Garth Myers on “Rethinking Urbanism: Lessons from Postcolonial Studies and the Global South,” combining archival research and oral histories of communities in Hartford, and Lucy worked with Professor Abigail Fisher Williamson on “Urban Responses to Immigration,” which examined how a diverse range of towns and cities respond to immigrants and how these responses shape immigrant incorporation.

“Heroes on the Homefront” with Connecticut State Library and “French Novelists and the American Academy” with Professor Sara Kippur

Melani Norsigian ’20 and Megan Caljouw ’20 worked with Christine Pittsley at the Connecticut State Library to prepare the exhibit “Heroes on the Homefront: A Look into the Role of Connecticut Citizens During World War I”, featuring soldiers’ letters, photographs, and wartime recipes, which were also showcased on the library’s instagram (pictured below). In addition, Melani and Megan explored “French Novelists and the American Academy: A Digital Humanities Project” with Professor Sara Kippur, creating story maps of French novelists’ travels in America. See Megan’s story map on Alain Robbe-Grillet and Melani’s story map on Nathalie Sarraute.

For more information on past PHC projects, see the following posts: