INTERDISCIPLINARY OPPORTUNITIES

Interdisciplinary work can take many forms, from the individual scholar who integrates a diverse range of materials and methodologies into his or her research, to ongoing collaborative ventures across multiple departments that produce new publications, national conferences, or new models for undergraduate and graduate pedagogy. Here are a few of the opportunities graduate students in the college have to forge their own innovative, interdisciplinary engagement:

Certificates

Certificate programs offers curricular opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary work and collaborative projects. Students either work outside their major area or simply delve more deeply into innovative directions within their own scholarship. These programs are founded on diversity and originality of approach, collegiality and can be beneficial for developing and carrying out dissertation projects. 

Interdisciplinary Communities

The college is leading the way in interdisciplinary approaches to the arts and humanities by developing emerging fields like digital humanities, and offering area study programs that draw on multiple fields to open exciting, multifaceted views of such regions of the world as Latin America, the Middle East and East Asia. The recent IGERT award granted to the UMD language community also speaks to ARHU’s strength and commitment to cultivate highly interdisciplinary projects that are organized to leverage and access the special intellectual knowledge of researchers across disciplines to solve complex problems.

Digital Humanities

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), jointly supported by the college and the University of Maryland Libraries, is a leading digital humanities center that pursues disciplinary innovation and institutional transformation through applied research, public programming and educational opportunities. Engaging in collaborative, interdisciplinary work at the intersection of technology and humanistic inquiry, MITH specializes in text and image analytics for cultural heritage collections, data curation, digital preservation, linked data applications and data publishing. MITH shares its areas of research with the campus and the broader community through conferences, lectures, fellowships, workshops and weekly seminars. 

Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

UMD’s program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) offers research and training opportunities in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience and computational neuroscience. The Language Group in the NACS program spans faculty in the Departments of Linguistics, Hearing and Speech Science, English, Biology and Computer Science, making it one of the largest pscychology of language research groups in the United States.

IGERT

The IGERT Program is an National Science Foundation sponsored interdisciplinary research and training enterprise grant to support language science at UMD. IGERT spans many departments, colleges and centers such as linguistics, psychology, information studies, hearing and speech science, computer science and second language acquisition. IGERT supports Ph.D. students as they engage in innovative interdisciplinary training, develop individual and collaborative research skills and develop leadership skills through student-led initiatives.

Film Studies Graduate Field Committee

The Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies (FS) is a cooperative effort by film faculty across the college to promote the study of cinema at the University of Maryland. The committee supports student research through its Graduate Colloquium in Cinema and Theory each spring and film-related events such as symposia, screenings and seminars. The committee is made up of faculty who are available to advise graduate students on their research in areas of film. Departments represented include the School of Languages, Literature and Culture (SLLC); English; History; Art History; American Studies; Classics; Ethnomusicology in the School of Music; and Non-print Media Services in the University Libraries. 

Medieval Early Modern Studies Graduate Field Committee

The Medieval Early Modern Studies (MEMUM) Graduate Field Committee is group of interdisciplinary graduate faculty and graduate students from Departments of Art History, Communication, English, History and the Schools of Languages, Literatures, and culture; and Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies who have come together to foster the thickest and most expansive collaborative exploration in the medieval and early modern periods. This formal structure for such collaboration will provide graduate students with a better, broader education and will foster interdisciplinary thinking, a greater diversity and originality of approach and collegiality. As dissertation projects become increasingly multi-disciplinary in scope, students’ preparation will be better served by the interconnected network of disciplines the members of MEMUM will facilitate. Throughout the academic year, MEMUM sponsors a series of faculty-student lunchtime talks.