Welcome to Humanities Initiative Home Page
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is committed to the advancement of knowledge of importance to Canada and the world. It is organizing an effort, known as the Humanities Initiative, to identify topics or questions of importance that would be pursued by eminent scholars in the humanities in Canada and abroad.
The humanities disciplines, defined broadly to include the traditional core humanities areas such as literature, language, philosophy, history, and the creative and performing arts, advance our knowledge through extensive study and criticism of oral and written works, communication and language, human culture and institutions. It also includes creative practices, such as the visual and performing arts. Together, humanities research gives us greater understanding of our own place and time, and provides the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of the key institutions that support and animate our lives. As such, humanities research is a critical endeavour that although distinct from disciplines based on the observation or analysis of phenomena, has comparable value to scholarship in the social and natural sciences.
Although research in the humanities has a tradition that is based on the work of individual scholars, there are many instances where progress in humanities research has advanced through collective activities of several scholars, in many cases interacting intensively over an extended period of time. The rise of humanities centres and institutes over the last half-century (with perhaps 200 such entities in existence around the world) have provided one mechanism to support various forms of collective and collaborative work. Many leading humanities scholars believe that such collective research is important to the advancement of humanities. It is this form of discursive engagement that CIFAR is positioned to promote.
This project is in its early stages, and is being guided by a Steering Committee consisting of humanist scholars drawn from a breadth of disciplines and institutions. Please contact Pekka Sinervo, Senior Vice-President, Research for more information.
