Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshop Award

The Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshops (ICW) program started in 2018 in the Office of Research and Graduate Programs as part of the CLA Roadmap commitment to a relentless focus on research and creative excellence. The application process moved to the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub (The Hub) in Fall 2024. ICWs continue to be funded by the Joan Aldous Innovation Fund.

Award Overview

The newly envisioned ICW centers University-community collaboration. It is intended to spur new collaborations, between and across disciplines, among scholars in CLA and beyond and their community partners. This award provides support to bring together faculty, staff, postdoctoral researchers, students, and community collaborators from a variety of fields to intensively study a topic or question and/or conduct a major research project.

Proposed forms of workshops may include (but are not limited to) community-engaged research projects, exhibitions and arts-based projects, symposia, or virtual centers. The proposing team may be a new or existing group, but the workshop must convene a range of participating scholars, disciplines, and community members beyond the proposing team. See previous ICW awardees for an indication of supported activities (although please note that the award guidelines have changed with the 2024-25 application term being the first to require a community collaboration component to the proposal).

One 2-3 year project will be awarded up to $75,000 each competition cycle, which will be held every other year.

Grant applications for the 2024 Award Cycle are currently closed. Applications for the next cycle will reopen in Fall 2026.

Spring 2025 Award 

Archival Repatriation: Addressing Data Sovereignty in UMN Collections

This workshop brings together collections scholars and professionals with community collaborators whose histories are held in part in our university collections, in order to effect archival restoration and repatriation. We are focusing on impacted communities, particularly Indigenous Nations, to promote data sovereignty. We aim to 1) advance efforts to return control of community-specific and culturally sensitive archival materials and related collections and knowledge to the communities they were extracted from, and 2) develop a process, model, and guidelines that can be used with additional collections and communities to continue and sustain this work.

• Kat Hayes (PI), Anthropology and Heritage Studies & Public History
• Dylan Goetsch, NAGPRA Coordinator, Office of Native American Affairs
• Audrianna Goodwin, Red Lake Nation, TRUTH (Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing Project) Project Research Assistant and Red Lake Tribal Research Fellow
• Ellen Holt-Werle, Institutional Archivist, University Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University Libraries
• Stewart Koyiyumptewa, Director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, representative of the Mimbres Advisory Committee
• Samantha Porter, Advanced Imaging and Visualization Research Associate, Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation Services (LATIS), College of Liberal Arts