The Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota is pleased to announce that we have received a Reciprocity & Redistribution in Action Grant for the graduate student summer internship program, “Grounded Knowledge.”
This grant is awarded by Humanities Without Walls and funded through the Mellon Foundation. The program will be coordinated by the Liberal Arts Engagement Hub, in partnership with CLA Graduate Student Career Services, 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 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.
The program will be administratively housed at the Institute for Advanced Study, a University of Minnesota hub for interdisciplinary collaboration reporting to the executive vice president and provost.
Applications
Applications for the “Grounded Knowledge” Graduate Summer Internship Program will open on January 20, 2026. Contact Hub Assistant Director Amanda Steepleton at [email protected] with any questions.
Published January 14, 2026