Call for Seminars
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH SEMINARS
Through the aegis of the Integrative PhD Program, Mellon Foundation funds are available for New School faculty to develop collaborative courses to be offered to be offered in the Spring semester of 2020. Â Supplemental salary of $5,000 per faculty member ($10,000 per course) will be allocated to support faculty in the development of six collaborative research seminars over the first two years of the Integrative PhD Program. Each collaborative research seminar will be co-designed and co-taught by a pair of faculty members, one from the humanistic social sciences and one from the fields of design or digital media. Other combinations of faculty teams are also eligible, as long as at least one member of the team has advised PhD level graduate students at some time.
The collaborative seminars are one of several mechanisms by which New School graduate students can combine training in the humanistic social sciences, exemplified in the research and teaching of the faculty at The New School for Social Research and Lang College, with training in the innovative concepts and methodological approaches to data visualization, graphic design, and digital media as developed by our world-class Parsons and Media Studies faculty. Collaboration across the social sciences and these digital and design fields will enable our students to become fluent in the full range of qualitative and quantitative methods along with the design thinking that can be deployed to answer the complex and pressing questions of our day. Combining social research and digital design training will also, we expect, enhance both sides of this combined curriculum, as students develop their individual research and scholarly projects and as our faculty at the NSSR and Parsons School of Design collaborate to help students to navigate this new terrain.
The seminars will be open to doctoral candidates from all departments in the social sciences, philosophy and history, as well as graduate students from Parsons and Media Studies. The seminars will be capped at 10 students so that the co-teachers can provide careful supervision of student research. At the same time, we will encourage participation by students from outside the NSSR so as to ensure the maximum degree of knowledge cross-fertilization.
Interested faculty teams should submit a brief course description, a brief explanation of the ways that the cross-disciplinary and cross-divisional elements of the course will engage with the goals of the Integrative PhD, and a list of potential readings and practices. Please include a note from the relevant deans indicating approval for both faculty partners to offer the collaborative seminar were it to be chosen.
Proposals for collaborative courses are due by April 15, 2019 (5pm EDT). Successful proposals will be selected by the Integrative PhD Advisory Committee. Please contact the Integrative PhD Program Co-directors with any questions.
Advisory Board
Zed Adams (NSSR, Associate Professor of Philosophy)
Daniel Sauter (Parsons, Associate Professor of Data Visualization, Co-Director Integrative PhD)
Robin Wagner-Pacifici (NSSR, University in Exile Professor of Sociology, Co-Director Integrative PhD)
Wendy Walters (Parsons, Associate Professor of Literary Studies)
Lana Lin (SPE, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs)