Humanities Commons, an essential tool for the humanities field, has received a $500,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH, to further develop and support its scholarly infrastructure.
Humanities Commons, led by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, director of digital humanities for MSU’s College of Arts and Letters, is an online network for people working in the humanities. It was founded by the Modern Language Association and is supported by the NEH and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Humanities Commons hopes to connect all scholars and practitioners in every corner of the humanities through its trusted, open-source, open-access network to enable anyone access to the work that matters to them, to create new conversations and collaborations and to get their work out to the world.
Humanities Commons memberships are open to anyone who is interested. There are no individual fees; simply create an account.
Its website enables scholars to engage in discussions across humanities disciplines, allowing them to upload articles, presentations and other scholarly materials to share and collaborate with their peers and the public.
Scholars also may create online professional profiles to help connect with others. There is nothing else like this for the humanities.
“There have been networks for sharing pre-prints and working papers in science and social science fields for quite some time, but this hasn’t been a part of the way the humanities have worked up until very recently,” said Fitzpatrick, project director for Humanities Commons and the principal investigator on the grant. “It’s exciting to see scholars and practitioners in the humanities wanting to be more open and public with their work.”
The grant will be used to implement a sustainability plan for the Humanities Commons digital network by enhancing the technical and administrative capacity to host the network and ensure its continuity.
The NEH challenge grant asks recipients to do significant fundraising, providing a 3:1 match on federal funds. The full amount of the combined grant and fundraising amounts will be used to complete a full migration of the platform’s hosting and fiscal sponsorship to MSU.
This development will be led by MESH, a co-venture of the College of Arts and Letters and MSU Libraries.
For the complete story, visit the College of Arts and Letters.