Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshops (RIW)

Join MiSciWriters for in-person and virtual workshops designed to develop science communication skills!

No science communication or editing experience required.
We are always welcoming new editors, translators, and/or illustrators. If you'd like to join MiSciWriters, fill out our membership form here.

STPP Alumni Chat with Tyler Hoard - Register Here!
Date and Time: Mar 12, 2026, 3:30-4:30 pm EDT
Location: Weill Hall, Room 3240
The Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program is excited to welcome STPP Alumnus and Associate Physical Scientist at the RAND Corporation, Tyler Hoard (PhD/STPP '24), for afternoon snacks and conversation. Tyler will share his academic path and current work experience, where he delivers high-impact policy research and analysis across national security, biosecurity, space policy, and emerging technology portfolios within multiple research divisions and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs).
Speaker Bio:
Tyler Hoard is an associate physical scientist at the RAND Corporation with interests spanning biosecurity, space policy, and emerging technologies. He holds a Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of Michigan, where he also earned a graduate certificate in Science, Technology, and Public Policy. At RAND, his research portfolio includes projects on biotechnology, AI, synthetic biology, food security, and the commercial space industry.

The Forum for Research in Medieval Studies (FoRMS), first formed as a
Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop (RIW) in Fall 2010, serves as a structure
for the Medieval Lunch series and a reading group for graduate students. In its geographical, historical, and disciplinary scope, FoRMS aims to
provide an important forum for graduate students and faculty to discuss their
work as contributions to the broad field of “medieval studies.” At FoRMS
sponsored lunches throughout the semester, graduate students can present their
ongoing research and receive feedback from other members of the FoRMS
community. FoRMS also sponsors interdisciplinary reading groups and other
social events, which are organized on a more ad-hoc basis.

The Political Ecology Workshop (PEW) is an interdisciplinary space for scholars at all career stages with interests in political ecology and related critical approaches to the study of environment-society interactions. PEW brings together a range of divisions across campus, including Anthropology, History, Environment and Sustainability, Political Science, Sociology, and all Area Studies departments and programs. We have founded a collaborative, multidisciplinary community with a shared investment questioning how environments and societies are co-produced and the ways in which power and inequality impact the dynamics and understandings of this co-production. We have run PEW as an RIW for two years and all the workshops have been possible from our committed participants from diverse fields. This year, we intend to develop our membership further by inviting scholars from broader fields and promoting PEW on listservs across campus.

PEW supports graduate student development, including for earlier-stage students seeking interdisciplinary conversations as they develop environment-society research projects and later-stage students seeking to incorporate political ecology into their work. PEW emphasizes dedicated time for graduate students to receive feedback on their work and facilitates faculty-student mentorship. It allows students to access a range of critical environmental studies perspectives they might not have encountered through coursework or departmental activities, and to grow from the feedback and insight of faculty and peers who share this commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and professional development.

For the 2025–26 academic year, Mediterranean Topographies (Meditopos) will be organized around the theme of home in the Mediterranean, which broadly includes domestic and private spaces. This interdisciplinary research workshop will explore domestic and private spaces not only as sites of personal and cultural significance but also as zones of political tension, displacement, surveillance, and resistance. How do personal experiences intersect with histories of migration, conflict, surveillance, and belonging? What does it mean to make, find, leave, or lose a home in times of political and climate instability? We will consider the meanings and materialities of ‘home’ across the Mediterranean region. From physical structures to affective attachments, we’ll explore how home is imagined, inhabited, and contested from diverse disciplinary perspectives. The workshop draws from multiple departments and programs at Michigan, including Comparative Literature, History, Anthropology, Middle East Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures, History of Art, Slavic Studies, English, and Classics, aiming to create a collaborative space linking across departments. We hope to foster interdisciplinary conversations about intimate, political, and symbolic dimensions of home in past and present Mediterranean contexts.

Join us for a public lecture with Megan Ward (Oregon State University.)
"The rise of grief tech, chatbots trained on the words, voices, and memories of lost loved ones, offers the alluring chance to continue a relationship beyond death. Grief tech is new, but that allure is much older, dating at least back to nineteenth-century Spiritualism. Today’s grief tech is connected to its Victorian predecessor by a shared culture of grief - one that seemed to have disappeared. While current psychological practices try to move the bereaved toward closure, Victorian mourning lingered in yearning. Bringing together Alice Stringfellow, a Victorian mother who corresponded her dead son every night, and Joshua Barbeau, a present-day aspiring actor who created a chatbot version of his girlfriend after her death, this talk explores how contemporary technologies might reveal the value (and risks) of using technology to redress the innately human problem of death."