Mission

The North Eastern Public Humanities Consortium (NEPH) fosters public projects animated by humanistic inquiry in support of art, culture, history, and education for a more democratic society.  Linking eleven diverse institutions across the region (Bard Graduate Center, Brown Public Humanities, Columbia, CUNY Grad Center, Harvard, Lehigh, Rutgers—Newark, University of Massachusetts Boston, Tufts and Yale), the consortium provides opportunities for faculty, students, professionals, and community members to build partnerships and enhance the relationship between liberal arts and the public through public humanities practices such as historic preservation, oral history, public history, material culture, curation and exhibition, documentary work, digital humanities, public art, cultural heritage, and more.  Institutional members of the consortium are committed to mutually engaged cooperation toward the following ends:

• Knowledge production and programming geared toward broad publics;
• Collaborative research and teaching—sharing resources, knowledge, and strategies across disciplinary and institutional divides;
• Supporting graduate students and early career scholars who participate in public intellectual work;
• Community engagement;
• Transformative, praxis-based pedagogy for the production of a more just and equitable future.

The consortium provides an innovative structure for sharing ideas, determining best practices, and strategizing funding and resources. NEPH aims to serve as a powerful advocate for the importance of public humanities both within our institutions and across the region.  We meet informally and collaboratively throughout the year and come together for a conference each spring hosted by one of the partner programs.