Sept 2024: Updates and reorganization in progress! Check back soon for current program descriptions.

As a University Institute, the FHI is a key incubator of interdisciplinary, cross-school collaborations on racial justice, human rights, health, climate, datafication, and other “grand challenges” that, more than ever, require humanistic engagement at every level, from concept to method to content. FHI mobilizes these topics through a set of signature programs and events that bring together faculty, students, staff, and broader publics to engage in real-time in intellectual exchange, to puzzle out pressing scholarly questions, and to think toward new ways to study and be in the world.

tgiFHI, the FHI's Friday morning lecture series, gives Duke faculty in the humanities, interpretive social sciences and arts the opportunity to present their current research to their departmental and interdepartmental colleagues, students, and other interlocutors in their fields.

Since 2004, Faculty Bookwatch — jointly hosted by the FHI and Duke University Libraries — is an event series that promotes interdisciplinary conversations on notable recent books by Duke faculty in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

Various thematic series at FHI, including the John Hope Franklin Legacies series — held in honor of our namesake — and Theme Series, round out the Institute's engagement programming.

The Franklin Humanities Institute’s Publishing Humanities Initiative (PHI) supports events and projects initiated by the FHI Humanities Labs, humanities faculty, and graduate students that provide new ways to engage in and learn about scholarly publishing, from its traditional expression in books and journals to new digital, visual, and nonlinear forms of publication.