The New Humanities Lab Pedagogy
The New Humanities Lab is a problem-based learning lab defined by the four core principles of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute:
Interdisciplinarity: problem-based learning requires that students learn interdisciplinary ways of questioning, ways of knowing, ways of narrating, ways of being, ways of critiquing, and ways of imagining the world
Experimentation: from conceptualization, to data collection, to analysis, to communication, the lab encourages students to experiment with new methods, new conceptual frameworks, and new forms of creative expression
Collaboration: while team science is not generally practiced in the humanities, it’s becoming increasingly important for projects that recognize the value of diverse perspectives and experiences in addressing problems, that seek to address complex problems, that intend to pursue large research grants
Public Engagement: working with diverse publics throughout the life span of a project is essential to developing thoughtful research projects that have the capacity to reach beyond academia
Recognizing that humanities projects—especially public humanities programs—work on timelines that rarely conform to semester calendars, the New Humanities Lab is organized to be a home for ongoing research collaborations with students, avoiding the stop-start character of semester-by-semester training in the humanities. As a lab at the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute, it has the infrastructure to administer long-term research, maintain the necessary community engagement, and train students through its onboarding program as well as provide ongoing trainings in theory, method, and skills developed specifically for each project but which develop transferable, long-term skills and competency outcomes.