In 2013-14, Dean Georges Van Den Abeele convened a task force to consider future directions for UCI’s School of Humanities. Their report recommended the creation of a new humanities center that would coordinate and support the work of various centers and groups and provide new synergy and connectivity for research in the Humanities. The Humanities Commons, with English Professor Julia Lupton as faculty director, was established in Fall 2025. With these goals in mind, the Humanities Commons began fostering a culture in which faculty and students from all departments could pursue their research and articulate the impact of their work.
Under the director of Professor Lupton, the Humanities Commons launched an internal grants program to support faculty research and publications, the Digital Humanities Working Group, Grad Lab graduate student professional development program, and Humanities Out There public humanities partnerships with community organizations. The Humanities Commons celebrated UCI’s 50th anniversary with a mini symposium “California Modern, Irvine Style: Campus Architecture & the Legacy of William Pereira,” a visit by NEH Chairman William “Bro” Adams, and a two-day conference “Is Theory Critical?”
With the support of the Humanities Center, faculty have established outreach programs such as TH!NK: Philosophy for 5th Graders, collaborated to receive major grant funding such as the Japan Foundation Institutional Support Program award, and launched initiatives such as Anteater Virtues.
Renamed the Humanities Center in 2019 under Dean Tyrus Miller and faculty director Judy Tzu-Chu Wu, we now manage approximately 20 centers, research clusters, and projects. The Humanities Center has received three Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar awards, two Mellon Foundation graduate training grants, and an NEH and a Luce Foundation project grant, as well as other funding, over the past ten years. Learn about our past activities through the annual/impact reports to the right and our current activities here on our website.