What is the Calgary Institute for the Humanities?

The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University (1998) proposed that the modern university is a special kind of intellectual ecosystem framed by scholarly inquiry, investigation, and discovery. In its 35-year history at the University of Calgary, the Calgary Institute for the Humanities (CIH) has developed three primary spheres that create its own ecosystem of research, and they function as foundational directives for CIH long-range planning and priorities.

Fellowship Programmes

The first sphere of the CIH research ecosystem is the fellowship programs (with 200 Institute fellows among the alumni to-date):

• 116 Annual Fellows
• 48 Post-doctoral Fellows
• 40 Visiting Fellows
• 12 Graduate Student Fellows (fellowship started in 2003)
• 512Undergraduate Student Fellows (fellowship started in 2006)

Research universities have special characteristics - particularly in regard to creation of new knowledge - that distinguish them from other post-secondary institutions. CIH fellowships provide ‘time out' from teaching and service commitments to take best advantage of inquiry and discovery-based methods that are inherent to the liberal arts model of research.

The Institute's mandate in its fellowship programs is to cultivate a special kind of intellectual environment that best serves creation of new knowledge in a humanities-based research environment by providing:

• time and place for reflective thinking and writing
• opportunities for creative exchange of ideas

Alumni-fellows frequently cite that the intellectual environment fostered at CIH was not only a highlight of their appointment at the Institute, it was formative for their scholarship. During its 35-year history, fellows and faculty-Associates have published over 90 books, as well as some 400 papers and articles, as a result of their association with CIH.

The fellowships are of paramount importance to successfully retain and recruit the best and brightest researchers to the University of Calgary. Currently, 4 University Professors are among the CIH Fellow-alumni. Research conducted at CIH contributes to exceptional instruction when Fellows return to their classrooms to engage the many students who seek humanities perspectives during their post-secondary education.

Research Initiatives

The second sphere of the CIH has to do with targeted research initiatives by faculty at the University of Calgary who locate their projects at the Institute usually in seminars and conferences, as well as research projects that are deliberately sponsored and hosted by the CIH.

The research ecosystem promoted by CIH has to do with the understanding that the humanities are not only an academic way of framing inquiry about humans, the humanities function in positive roles for the larger society -

• as a means for understanding the past, present and future
• they assist in reflecting on values and heritage
• they offer perspectives on issues impacting individuals and their communities
• they provide explanatory models and nuanced interpretations of complex human questions

In order to optimize its resources and achieve recognition as a hub of intellectual inquiry that takes best advantages of what humanities research can offer to the academy and larger society, the CIH sponsors 2 long-term strategic research projects:

• Authority and Civil Society
• Humanities and Place

For more details on these research initiatives see Research Initiaitves.

Community Engagement

The third sphere that distinguishes the intellectual ecosystem of the Humanities Institute is its long-standing track record of promoting humanistic study outside of the University from multi-disciplinary perspectives.

• in April of 2012, CIH celebrated its 32nd anniversary of the Annual Community Forum
• the Seminar has published 15 volumes of collected essays on such diverse topics as "family structure and social change", "violence against women", "navigating the information age", "the role of the modern union", and "the future of work"
• in the last 12 years, CIH has partnered with CBC Radio One, specifically the IDEAS program hosted by Paul Kennedy; the Seminar is broadcast to over 120,000 listeners in national and international settings; subjects dealt with in this forum of the Annual Seminar are diverse, timely and engaging as demonstrated by topics such as "Designing Humans: Planning the Perfect Gene Pool" (2000), "Protest and Power" (2002), "What Does It Mean To Be Green?" (2004), "What Is The Canadian Military? Rethinking It From The Ground Up" (2005), "The Canadian Judicial System.  The Role of Canadian Judges as Makers or Interpreters of Law" (2006), Identity Online - Views of Community and Self" (2007), "Homelessness. Public and Private Responses" (2008), "Why People Apologize: Public Apologies and Their Consequences" (2009), "Great Expectations: Citizens' Expectations and Entitlements" (2010), " Untangling Complexity" (2011) and "The Question of Optimism" (2012).

Annual seminars, public lectures by Fellows, faculty-Associates, and guest scholars at CIH represent the active role taken by the Institute to make knowledge and insight of the humanities part of public life that is accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. This third sphere of the CIH ecosystem contributes to a vibrant intellectual interplay between campus and community.