The Collaborative Humanities Initiative promotes collaborative practices that expand or transform modes of research, teaching, and learning in the humanities and across disciplines. Through dedicated events and courses, the Initiative fosters an expanded sense of intellectual community for scholars and students dedicated to thinking together across disciplines, frameworks, and locations.

As part of the Collaborative Humanities Initiative, the Cogut Institute supports the development of new collaborative undergraduate courses across disciplines, divisions, and schools. In the spirit of Brown’s open curriculum, the Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities promotes forms of inquiry that adapt the resources of different disciplines to defined areas of research or specific research problems. Specially designed collaborative seminars and undergraduate collaborative courses explore long-range problems and questions as well as more timely and urgent issues. These programs offer students the opportunity to practice and further develop their collaborative skills.

In both its content and structure, the Collaborative Humanities Initiative resonates with Brown University’s emphasis on collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and interdisciplinary approaches as articulated in its strategic plan. It advances the important ways in which the humanities contribute to understanding and meeting the grand challenges facing society and the world.