Innovation Through Colaboration in Humanities Research

"Humanities Collaboration and Research Practices: Exploring Scholarship in the Global Midwest" was funded by a Humanities Without Walls (HWW) Global Midwest award to explore the community of practice engaged in the HWW Global Midwest initiative. Led by Harriett Green, then at the University of Illinois of Urbana-Champaign and Angela Courtney from Indiana University Bloomington, the "Humanities Collaboration and Research Practices" project (hereafter referred to as HCRP) examined the collaborative research practices of HWW Global Midwest awardees to understand how humanities research happens at the level of practice, process, and collaboration. The project team conducted semi-structured interviews between fall 2015 through spring 2016 with twenty-eight researchers who participated in projects funded by the first round of HWW Global Midwest awards. Participants were asked about the aims of their collaborative projects, the processes for developing their collaborations, the types of resources used to support collaboration and project management (and whether additional resources are required), the challenges they encountered, data sharing practices, and how their research approaches and methodologies were influenced by engaging in collaborative research. What emerges from these interviews is a rich portrait of the ongoing evolution of collaborative humanities research and its social and intellectual benefits, both actual and still potential, as well as indications of the institutional and cross-institutional support and development needed to realize that potential.