Welcome!
The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center is an intellectually vibrant and nourishing hub for interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations that demonstrate the importance of the humanities and humanistic social sciences in understanding and positively reshaping our world. We offer a range of university and public humanities programs that bring people together. We provide fellowships and awards to faculty and students conducting original research as well as to our 15 member units to enrich their students' experiences.
Our theme for the 2026–27 academic year is Counter. Join us for lectures, workshops, and events that foreground counterintuitive insights from the humanities and social sciences! Upcoming programming will center questions of quantification, representation, opposition, and exchange to explore a range of methods, topics, and encounters that reveal the shape of systems, desires, and connections. Given what the humanities and social sciences are up against, what kinds of accounting does the current moment demand? How can we ensure our knowledge and practices count? Read more about the theme here.
Counter Fellows
UC faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students working on research and/or creative projects that directly engage the Center’s annual theme, engage in humanistic inquiry, broadly conceived, and would benefit from cross-disciplinary exchange are invited to apply to our new cross-college 2026–27 Counter Fellows program. Fellows will meet once a month to discuss their projects, reflect on members varied theoretical and methodological approaches, and provide substantive feedback to one another. Each fellow will receive a $2,000 stipend. Applications are due June 15. Read more about this opportunity here: Counter Fellows Call for Applications
Counter Programming
Faculty, postdoctoral fellows, units, and campus and community partners are invited to nominate speakers and propose workshops, performances, or other events that connect with the Center’s annual theme. Submissions received by June 15 will receive full consideration. https://taft.center/counterprogram
Counter Seminar Pitches
UC faculty (tenure-track, educator, research, practice, and visiting) and postdoctoral fellows are invited to pitch new course ideas for individual and team-taught Taft Research Seminars related to the 2026–27 theme Counter. Pitches must be for new course offerings that could run in spring 2027 (course buy-out funds will be available). We will select the most promising pitches and provide $2,500 in summer development funds per seminar. Pitches are due June 15 by 5pm. https://taft.center/counterpitch