Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshops (RIW)

The Interdisciplinary Science and Policy Initiative for Research Engagement (InSPIRE) is a student-run workshop for graduate students interested in engaging with science and technology policy issues.

An interdisciplinary research group focused on the role of critical theory in the academy today and the question of how we study culture in our current political climate.

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.

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.

Our meetings cover a wide range of topics, including proposal development, book discussions, and critical reviews of recent papers. We also host presentations by faculty and alumni. To enhance this interdisciplinary approach, our workshop is designed to foster collaboration by engaging students and professionals from diverse fields.

Though instructors who teach the nineteenth century readily understand why the nineteenth century matters, to many of our students, the period can feel distant, inaccessible, or irrelevant to their own lives or learning. How do scholars craft engaging courses that center on the nineteenth century? What strategies can we use to teach our students how to analyze nineteenth-century history, artifacts, or texts? What challenges and rewards are there in teaching the nineteenth century today, and how can we encourage our students to engage with the century’s complexities? To respond to these questions, the Nineteenth-Century Forum is hosting an interdisciplinary panel on teaching, with experienced instructors from numerous fields in the humanities. This panel will both equip graduate students and newer instructors to teach effectively and engagingly on topics of the nineteenth century, as well as create space for cross-disciplinary insights to be shared between members.

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.