In mid-November, Project Director Kathleen Davis and Project Manager Kim Evelyn attended the National Humanities Conference (NHC) in Salt Lake City, Utah. The 2016 NHC brought together the Federation of State Humanities Councils, the National Humanities Alliance, and partners from academic institutions under the theme “Humanities Partnerships—Meeting Local and Global Challenges.”

At the conference Davis and Evelyn attended a range of panels. These included panels featuring presentations from representatives of other Next Generation Ph.D. institutions and similar Mellon Fellowship programs, leaders from the National Humanities Alliance, and leaders of the American Council of Learned Societies. Of special note was a presentation on the “Recatalyzing Newport” project by Elizabeth Francis, Director of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities (RICH) and a member of URI’s NextGen PhD Core Committee.

Some of the highlights of the conference included discussions on:

• the increasing role of academic institutions in public humanities programming
• integrating training and diverse work experiences with Ph.D. programs
• the important roles faculty can play in curricular changes to humanities graduate programs and public humanities programming
• examples of public humanities projects developed by graduate students and state humanities councils, such as RICH’s Rhode Tour project
• the role of academic institutions in helping state and national organizations advocate for the humanities.