UK Gaines Center expands humanities cooperatives to strengthen cross-disciplinary collaboration

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 25, 2025) — This year, the University of Kentucky Gaines Center for the Humanities launched an ambitious new initiative designed to foster meaningful interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration across campus. The “Gaines Humanities Cooperatives” were created to bring together faculty, staff and graduate students from diverse fields to spark intellectual exchange and lay the foundation for innovative humanities-centered projects that engage both the university and the broader community. Supported by the Gaines Center through funding, meeting space and other relevant resources, the cooperatives are intended to serve as a hub for community.

The pilot cooperative, launched in 2024 under the leadership of Mel Stein, Ph.D., of UK Gender and Women’s Studies, examined intersections of health and the humanities. What began as a small pilot group has grown to include nine participants from the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Nursing, Public Health and Medicine. Building on that success, Gaines Director and Endowed Chair Michelle Sizemore, Ph.D., expanded the program.

“Last year’s pilot was an important test case for the intellectual community we wish to foster with the co-ops," Sizemore said. "We were responding to what we’d been hearing from all corners of campus about the desire to find more ways to work together across colleges and departments. Our calculation in scaling up was that some funds, some structure and some designated time could incubate incredible projects.”

Today, six cooperatives — spanning topics from digital pedagogies to tree conservation — are actively cultivating cross-disciplinary research communities.

Members have noted the transformative potential of the experience.

“This cooperative opportunity has brought together interested parties with backgrounds in history, poetry, medicine, environmental science, geology, archives, oral history, community engagement, disaster planning, sociology and many more,” said Matt Strandmark, co-leader of the Appalachian Water Humanities Cooperative. “It has not only been a tool to promote conversations and shared work, but also a means to generate and ideate future partnerships, projects and initiatives related to these topics. We believe that this work is vital to the University of Kentucky’s land-grant mission to serve the Commonwealth and its people.”

Patterson School Ph.D. candidate Nash Meade of the digital pedagogies cooperative said the Gaines Cooperatives “pique interest in fields that often struggle to find an academic home.”

“In our case, game studies is a popular space, and UK has quite a few game studies scholars, but they are scattered across a half dozen departments,” Meade said. “The cooperatives show that with some funding, scholars from across a university — who might otherwise never interact — can come together, find community and do some awesome work.”

Additional members across the cooperatives echoed these experiences.

“This semester, as a result of my participation in the global crisis cooperative, I’ve affirmed bonds with scholars across the university and collaborated with them to put on research-related events,” said Jap-Nanak, a participant in the global crisis cooperative. “We organized a work-in-progress session for one of our members and plan to arrange a visiting speaker in the spring. Being part of this collective has strengthened my motivation for scholarship and shown me that it need not be a solitary activity. The benefits are immediate as well as latent: we’re experiencing a sense of solidarity in the group, which will ultimately lead to a positive climate in which to do future work.”

The full list of 2025-26 Gaines Humanities Cooperatives, along with their leaders and co-leaders, includes:

“Mapping the Affective, Rhetorical, Sociocultural and Symbolic Dimensions of Global Cities”

• Charlie Zhang (Gender and Women’s Studies)
• Michael Samers (Geography)

“Legal Options to Saving Trees: Honors and Conserving Historic Natural Artifacts across Kentucky Communities”

• Emily Bergeron (Historic Preservation)
• Lynn Roche-Phillips (Geography)

“Global Crisis: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry”

• Martin Jensen (English)
• Sharom Yam (Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies)

“The Appalachian Water Humanities Cooperative”

• Matthew Strandmark (UK Libraries)
• Kathryn Newfont (History)

“Health and the Humanities”

• Mel Stein (Gender and Women’s Studies)

“The Digital Pedagogies Research Cluster Initiative”

• Mark Hines (English)
• Nash Meade (The Patterson School)

Each cooperative includes at least three members representing two or more departments, units or programs at the university. Co-op groups meet a minimum of two times per semester — plus a fall orientation — and collaborate throughout the year to develop shared research questions, pedagogical tools, community partnerships and/or advocacy projects.

The Gaines Center is excited to announce that all 2025-26 cooperatives will share their work with the community at the annual Lafayette Symposium 3-5 p.m. April 16, 2026, offering the campus an opportunity to learn more about the vibrant interdisciplinary work taking place across the humanities. The call for the second iteration of Gaines Cooperatives will launch in January 2026.