The 2022-2023 Academic Year at the Miami Institute
At the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences, we are working on some exciting projects this 2022-2023 academic year! Please stay tuned for more of our public forums and the unveiling of our community's project, the Global Index! In the meantime— and especially for those new to our community— here is a recap of our past activities.
We launched publicly in November 2020 with a series of public forums on the social science fields. Bringing together Global Majority scholars in these fields across the Global South and North, these forums have helped us as Global Majority knowledge producers to amplify each other’s work and to ask pointed, critical questions about our disciplines. As far as their structure, these conversations tend to begin with written essays authored by five or so Global Majority scholars who have come together to answer a central question posed by the forum curator (a member of our community), and to conclude with a virtual conversation among the authors.
The Miami Institute’s inaugural forums started with critical discussions on knowledge production in the fields of economics, philosophy, sociology, and (forthcoming) political science and history. We furthermore have hosted public forums on social and solidarity economies in Latin America; international development theory and race; and, reimagining global public goods in the twenty-first century. We also host informal virtual coffee chats on research and memory (“Café en casa”), which are intergenerational discussions on what it means to achieve greater equality, liberation, and human dignity at the local, national, regional, and global levels. These forums help create community among Global Majority scholars and to further amplify our work and concerns about knowledge production in our fields.
With an equal appreciation for the ways that funding can shape knowledge production in the social sciences, our community came together in the summer of 2021 for a three-day workshop to discuss the past and present of social science funding within and beyond the United States and ways that experiences with cooperative economic models around the world might inform the funding of the social sciences today. This workshop at the Miami Institute, titled “Funding the Revolution in the Academe,” brought together scholars in the social sciences, leaders and practitioners in nonprofits and philanthropy, and organizers embracing solidarity economy and mutual aid models.
In launching these public events, we have collaborated with the National Conference of Black Political Scientists in the U.S. (NCOBPS); the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA); the Comparte Network throughout Latin America; the DiSE Collective in Kerala, India and Toronto, Canada; the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IHSS) at Queen Mary University of London; and, the Centro Internacional de Investigación en Economía Social y Solidaria at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City (CIIESS).
Complementing these network-enriching public events, we are working on our biggest project to date: the Miami Institute’s Global Index, which aims to make publicly accessible to scholars, funders, and the general public alike an engaging database of Global Majority knowledge producers in the social sciences— both past and present. This Index is addressing the inequities of knowledge production and consumption around the world. How much richer (and accurate) would our understandings of the world and its people be if we internalized a broader scope of knowledge producers’ work and advice in the social sciences? The Miami Institute’s Global Index aims to facilitate this process for us all.
This 2022-23 academic year, we will continue with our public forums and “Café en Casa” series. Behind-the-scenes, we also are working on the Global Index.
Welcome to the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences! For ways to support us, please visit our membership and donation pages.
-Maribel Morey, executive director, Miami Institute for the Social Sciences
