The Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Democracy Initiative
The Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Democracy Initiative is a collaborative and interdisciplinary undertaking. Driven by the Arts and Humanities, our programmes put identities, societies and cultures at the centre of democracy research, recognise the importance of experiences, past and present, and consider the role of emotion. In doing so, they provide the often-missing human values, nuances, and historical insights while fostering critical thinking skills, empathy, and imagination.
The Hub has collaborated with leading arts and humanities scholars from the universities of Ambedkar, Białystok, Columbia, Freiburg, Jawaharlal Nehru, NYUAD, São Paolo, Tartu, Utrecht, Virginia and the Western Cape on related projects. We are also working with civil society, media, and policy practitioners and seeking to interact with a wider general audience across the democracy initiative. We are interested in forming new links and partnerships.
ONGOING PROJECTS
Schuler Democracy Forum: a new initiative exploring the diverse connections between the media and our democratic systems.
The Forum combines academic research with knowledge exchange and engagement.
It seeks to bridge the divides between academia, media, government, civic society, enterprise and the public to translate Arts and Humanities research into real-world practice and activity. It aims to work with diverse populations and explore new participatory networks and outlets.
The Forum is generously supported by Dr Beate Schuler and is funded from July 2021 to July 2024. During this time, research and engagement activities will address the theme of the media and democracy. A launch event will be held on Wednesday 15 September 2021.
To mark the announcement of the Forum, a special panel event was held on 27 April 2021 at which journalists and academics considered the present function of the ‘fourth estate’ and asked how the media can effectively support democracy.
Read our news story about the new Schuler Forum for Democracy here.
Listen back to ‘Revisiting the Fourth Estate: does the media still serve democracy?’ here.
Community Engagement Praxis for Research in the Arts and Humanities (CEPRAH): a project led by the Trinity Long Room Hub in partnership with AONTAS, Ireland’s National Adult Learning Organisation, and funded by an Irish Research Council New Foundations Grant (Strand 1a). The project aims to improve collaboration between the Arts and Humanities and civic and community organisations. CEPRAH will run until December 2021.
More information on the project can be found here.
PAST PROJECTS
CHCI-Mellon Global Humanities Institute (GHI) on the Crises of Democracy: an 18-month project funded by the Consortium of Humanities and Centres institutes and the A.W. Mellon Foundation. The GHI was led by the Trinity Long Room Hub in partnership with the University of São Paulo, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Zagreb, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. It brought together 40 international arts and humanities researchers from over 30 different disciplines and career stages to examine crises of democracy through the lens of cultural trauma.
A free online curriculum exploring these issues was launched in April 2020.
More information on the project can be found here.
Rethinking Democracy in an Age of Pandemic: a six-part series which ran across April and May 2020 exploring the impact of the pandemic on democracies worldwide organised in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
A free online curriculum exploring these issues was launched in December 2020.
More information on the series can be found here.
Rethinking Democracy: a series of three audio podcasts with key panellists from the ‘Rethinking Democracy’ series organised in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
More information on the podcasts can be found here.
CONTACT DETAILS
Please direct all queries to Dr Elspeth Payne, Schuler Democracy Forum Coordinator in the Trinity Long Room Hub.
