February 2026 Public Humanities
A monthly newsletter connecting publicly-engaged humanities scholars and practitioners across the US (and beyond), hosted by the Department of Public & Applied Humanities at The University of Arizona.
In this issue:
Calls for papers / proposals
Upcoming events
Publications & project news
February spotlight: Q&A with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel
Grants & funding opportunity
Employment & fellowships opportunities
If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to Substack, a free app, to receive the newsletter in your email inbox and not miss any future news! We also encourage you to submit items to share. If you have any questions or would like to connect about the newsletter, please email Giulia Negretto at giulianegretto@arizona.edu.
Calls for Papers / Proposals
Public Humanities Journal
Public Humanities, the international open-access, peer-reviewed journal, is currently accepting submissions for several upcoming themed issues. Open calls include The Sports Issue, which examines the role of sports in public life and culture (deadline: October 1, 2026); Public Humanities for Students, edited by Jeffrey R. Wilson, which centers student perspectives and participation in public humanities work (deadline: May 31, 2026); Counting Ourselves, focused on identity, data, and measurement in public contexts (deadline: October 1, 2026); The Museum Issue, addressing museums and public engagement (deadline: June 1, 2026); and Memorial Culture in Public Art, exploring practices of memorialization in public space (deadline: June 1, 2026).
Learn more
3rd International Academic Conference on Social Sciences & Humanities (IACSSH)
The IACSSH, which will be held in Singapore, 27-29 March 2026, invites proposals for original research across social sciences and humanities disciplines, including sociology, history, literature, education, and related fields. Contributions may take the form of presentations, posters, and papers, all subject to peer review and inclusion in conference proceedings.
Abstract Deadline: 10 March 2026
Learn More
2026 Utah Conference on Community Engagement
Utah State University
The Transforming Communities Institute at Utah State University invites proposals for their 2026 Utah Conference on Community Engagement, to be held May 11–13, 2026 at USU Eastern in Price, Utah. They seek contributions from scholars, practitioners, students, and community leaders engaged in research, teaching, program implementation, or service work with real-world impact, in a variety of formats and across tracks such as community-engaged research and evaluation, teaching and administration, programming, and service.
Deadline: extended to February 8, 2026
Learn more
Upcoming Events
DH Leadership
Digital Humanities Summer Institute
June 8-12
In-person workshop
In these times of austerity and unsurety, it’s even more important to understand leadership and resource allocation for the long-term, especially if you’re grappling with technology, including AI, and need to figure out how to create a healthy Digital Humanities ecosystem. This invitation is open to all, including funding agencies, academic administrators, professional organizations, policy makers, staff in DH support units, and anyone curious about what leadership might look like in their future.
More Information & Register
2026 Rare Book School Summer Courses
Rare Book School
In-person and synchronous online course
This year’s schedule features almost 50 in-person and online courses, including nine new courses. RBS has launched new partnerships and course locations this summer: York in the United Kingdom, North Bennet Street School in Boston, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. Courses in Charlottesville will once again be offered at RBS’s home in the University of Virginia’s Edgar Shannon Library. For questions, contact rbsprograms@virginia.edu.
Application deadline: first round February 17, 2026
More information & Apply
Publications and Project News
The Promise of the Humanities at Community Colleges
This report from the American Council of Learned Societies highlights the vital role of two-year institutions in humanistic scholarship. Key takeaways include the power of transformative pedagogy for diverse student populations, the deep integration of community engagement, and the necessity of flexible research support for faculty balancing heavy teaching loads. It’s an essential look at the humanities as a public good. This video provides direct commentary from Dean of Social Sciences Jamie Thomas on the report’s significance for faculty and students in the community college sector.
Public History: A Practical Guide
The newly updated 3rd edition offers expanded global case studies, enriched coverage of digital and media history, and two new chapters on impact, evaluation, and the future of public history. Thi edition equips public humanities practitioners with refreshed methodologies, practical tools, and sector‑wide insights for interpreting and engaging diverse communities.
February Spotlight: Q&A with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel
Lesley-Ann Noel is a Trinidadian design educator and Dean of Design at OCAD University. She authored Design Social Change and co‑edited The Black Experience in Design. She has also taught at NCState, Tulane, Stanford, and UWI. This month, we are excited to highlight her perspectives as a public humanities practitioner via a brief Q&A.
How did you first become interested in the Public Humanities?
My interest in the Public Humanities emerged from my lived experience growing up in the Caribbean, where community spaces have always been vibrant sites of knowledge-making. I come from places where storytelling, craft, ritual, and everyday practices are forms of scholarship—though dominant academic structures seldom recognize them as such.
As I grew as a designer and educator, I began to see that much of what universities call “public engagement” is simply academia arriving late to what communities have long understood: that knowledge is collective, relational, and often produced far beyond the university. My involvement in the Public Humanities is rooted in a desire to honor these other epistemologies, to challenge extractive research practices, and to help build frameworks where marginalized voices are not just included, but truly centered.
I didn’t initially think of my work as Public Humanities, but in retrospect, much of it fits within that space. Throughout my career I’ve worked both inside and outside academic institutions, focusing on making knowledge and theory accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. The Designer’s Critical Alphabet is one clear example—an effort to distill critical theory into approachable, bite-sized concepts, illustrated with everyday applications.
Ultimately, I see the Public Humanities as a space where design, community knowledge, and social justice converge. It gives me the opportunity to work with people—not on them or for them—and to make scholarship accountable to the publics it claims to serve.
What are some of the challenges involved in your work in the Public Humanities?
Working in decolonial and community‑driven ways always involves navigating tension. One of the central challenges is working within institutions that continue to privilege written, Western, and individualist forms of knowledge production. Community knowledges are often treated as “data” rather than as theory or intellectual contribution. This creates a constant need to advocate for epistemic equity and to remind institutions that knowledge emerges in many forms, rhythms, and relationships.
There are also significant structural challenges: institutional timelines rarely align with community timelines; funding models often demand neat deliverables instead of relational processes; and evaluation metrics tend to reward academic outputs rather than community impact. Power imbalances show up in almost every interaction—between universities and economically marginalized communities, between adults and youth, or within conversations shaped by race, gender, and class. These dynamics require care, humility, and ongoing reflection.
Emotional labor is another persistent challenge. Doing Public Humanities from a decolonial perspective means confronting inequities, histories of harm, and the ongoing realities of coloniality. It requires building trust, showing up consistently, and holding space for conversations that institutions are often uncomfortable having. This work can be deeply meaningful, but it can also be emotionally demanding. Addressing inequities often means engaging in difficult conversations about race, economics, and power, and questioning the structures that shape academia, funding, and public interest. It also means continually interrogating my own assumptions and priorities.
Despite the difficulties, these challenges reaffirm why the work matters. They remind me that decolonial practice is an ongoing negotiation with power, and a commitment to transforming how knowledge is produced, shared, and valued.
What future directions do you envision for your work as a Public Humanist practitioner?
Moving forward, I hope to deepen practices that redistribute power in knowledge-making. This includes creating more opportunities for communities to define research questions, lead projects, and generate their own frameworks of interpretation. I am increasingly interested in developing methods that foreground care, accountability, and collective authorship—pushing back against the individualism that dominates both design and academia. I want to expand pedagogical work that helps students unlearn harmful assumptions and engage with communities with humility and reciprocity.
I also envision more collaborations across the Global South and diasporic communities, where shared colonial histories can become the basis for new solidarities and new epistemologies. Ultimately, I see my future work building platforms where marginalized publics are not “engaged” but recognized as co‑creators of knowledge, with the authority to shape narratives about their own lives.
Grant & Funding Opportunity
ACLS Open Book Prize + Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)
These awards celebrate outstanding open-access monographs across anthropology, environmental humanities, history, literary and media studies, multimodal scholarship, and political science. The Book Prize honors the author of an exceptional open-access monograph with $20,000, recognizing innovative humanistic scholarship. The Publishing Award grants $30,000 to the publisher of the winning title to support the development of future open-access books. Together, they promote equitable access to high‑quality humanities research and highlight the breadth of humanistic inquiry represented in today’s open-access publishing landscape.
Employment & Fellowships Opportunities
ACLS Leading Edge Fellowships
American Council of Learned Societies
Deadline: March 11, 2026
Program Intern, Public Knowledge
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (New York)
Deadline: February 27, 2026
2026 Rare Book School Summer Assistants
Rare Book School (Charlottesville, VA)
Deadline: Starting on 16 January, 2026, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until all open positions are filled
Rare Book School Program Manager
Rare Book School (Charlottesville, VA)
Deadline: Open until position is filled
Assistant Director of Community-Based Learning
Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT)
Program Coordinator (Pathways)
Modern Language Association (New York City, NY)
Deadline: February 5, 2026
Head of Research and Instruction, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center
University of Chicago Library (Chicago, IL)
Deadline: February 7, 2026
Humanities Hub Internship Coordinator
University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, IA)
Deadline: February 5, 2026, for full consideration
As always, check out the latest postings on the job boards for the National Council on Public History and the American Association for State and Local History, which provide lists of opportunities that might be of interest to those trained in the public humanities.
Interested in careers in scholarly publishing? Check out the Association of University Presses and the Society of Scholarly Publishing job boards.
Interested in careers in museums? Check out the American Alliance of Museums job board.