The Hub Awarded Humanities Without Walls Grant
The Liberal Arts Engagement Hub is thrilled to announce that they are the recipient of a Reciprocity & Redistribution in Action Grant for the graduate student summer internship program, “Grounding Knowledge.” This grant is awarded through the Institute for Advanced Study by the Mellon Foundation as a sub-award of Humanities Without Walls and is intended to support paid summer internship programs with local community organizations for Ph.D. students in the humanities, arts, and related fields.
Congratulations to the grant’s collaborators Yuichiro Onishi, Bianet Castellanos, Juliet Burba, Amanda Steepleton, and Mackenzie Sullivan.
Grounded Knowledge
Grounded Knowledge is a graduate student summer internship program rooted in communities of struggle, where the ethos and framework for reciprocity and redistribution are put into practice to animate dynamic knowledge production. The program builds upon a distinct culture of community engagement at the University of Minnesota's Liberal Arts Engagement Hub (The Hub). Since 2022, The Hub has incubated relationships with local organizations, especially those enmeshed in social justice struggles. These relationships leave The Hub uniquely positioned to co-create public humanities internships that will benefit the organizations and their communities, while opening opportunities for graduate students in the humanities to engage with historical injustices that pulsate in the present.
In addition to a 10-week summer internship, students will engage in the following three “grounding sessions” to strengthen our collective commitments to banding together in the service of constructing a new language of struggle and aligning our work with HWW’s directives and methodologies centered on reciprocity and redistribution: (1) an orientation workshop with participating community organizations in April 2026; (2) a summer midpoint gathering to share advances made and challenges experienced in July 2026; and (3) a closing roundtable to discuss outcomes, successes, challenges, and learnings in late August 2026.
Applications
Applications are currently open for Grounded Knowledge summer internships, which run from June - August 2026. Please see the “Grounded Knowledge” Graduate Student Summer Internship Program Application for more information about the application process and evaluation criteria. Applications are due on February 22, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. Contact Hub Assistant Director Amanda Steepleton at [email protected] with any questions.
