2026–27

Humane Studies, this year.

Name: 2026 Data Science and AI Summit
Start: 2026-12-02
End: 2026-12-03
Location: University of Michigan

In its 50th year, Humane Studies is taking its conversations beyond the classroom and beyond Gambier. IPHS students, alumni, faculty, and collaborators are presenting research, convening public conversations, and asking what happens when the oldest questions about human life meet the technologies and institutions shaping the present.

Here is where to find us.

At Kenyon

Big questions, shared.

Throughout the year, IPHS brings students, faculty, alumni, and guests into conversations that cross the boundaries between the humanities, social sciences, arts, computing, and public life.

September 3, 2026Gambier

Kenyon Digital Humanities + Human-Centered AI Exchange

Do We Still Need Experts?

Who Gets to Turn Culture Into Data?

More voices at the tech table. Big questions behind the tools.

As AI and computational methods transform the study of culture, who gets to decide what counts as knowledge, evidence, interpretation, and expertise? This conversation brings perspectives from across the humanities, social sciences, arts, libraries, and computing into a shared discussion of what expertise means in an increasingly computational world.

September 25–26, 2026Gambier

IPHS at 50

Homecoming 2026

More than half a century of Humane Studies, marked during Kenyon’s Homecoming weekend with alumni, students, faculty, and friends of the program.

Explore the full Homecoming program →

October 22, 2026Gambier

What Do We Save?

AI, Archives & Cultural Memory

What happens to cultural memory when archives meet artificial intelligence? This conversation asks how new technologies are changing preservation, access, interpretation, and the choices communities make about what survives.

Drawing on work across archives, digital humanities, cultural heritage, and AI, the discussion considers not simply what technology can recover, but who decides what should be preserved and how cultural knowledge should travel into the future.

Related work: Archival Intelligence →

November 12, 2026Gambier

From Liberal Arts Majors to Careers in AI and Tech

What can an interdisciplinary liberal-arts education make possible in a rapidly changing technological world? IPHS alumni and guests discuss routes from the liberal arts into work involving artificial intelligence, technology, data, research, and emerging fields.

The conversation focuses not on a single career pipeline, but on the intellectual habits that travel: learning across disciplines, asking good questions, communicating across fields, understanding people and institutions, and approaching new technologies critically and creatively.

Spring 2027

The conversation continues.

Additional conversations, visiting speakers, and exchanges will be announced throughout the year, bringing together the arts, humanities, social sciences, technology, and public life around the questions Humane Studies has always asked: what it means to be human, what makes a life worth living, and what makes a good society.

Beyond Gambier

IPHS on the road.

Work developed through Humane Studies is traveling this year to research gatherings and public conversations in the United States and abroad.

GambierSept. LondonOct. 13–16 AmesOct. 16 Ann ArborOct. 20 · Dec. 2–3

October 13–16, 2026London, United Kingdom

Schmidt Sciences Humanities and Artificial Intelligence Convening

Archival Intelligence

IPHS faculty Katherine Elkins and Jon Chun join fellow Humanities and Artificial Intelligence awardees in London for the Schmidt Sciences convening, representing work on Archival Intelligence and the use of AI for cultural heritage, archives, and endangered collections.

Explore Archival Intelligence →

October 16, 2026Iowa State University

Technology, Storytelling, and the Limits of Language 2026

IPHS students and alumni present research on AI agents

Marisol Brito, Melissa Vu, and Nic Pechon-Elkins bring research developed through Humane Studies to Iowa State for TSLL 2026.

What Constructed Agents Sound Like: Language, Pragmatics, and Culture in Human-AI Interaction

Their work asks how constructed AI agents use language, perform identity and social roles, and reproduce or transform the cultural assumptions embedded in human communication.

October 20, 2026University of Michigan

2026 AI Symposium

Current IPHS students present research

Current IPHS students bring their work to the University of Michigan’s 2026 AI Symposium, extending research begun in Humane Studies into a wider interdisciplinary AI community.

December 2–3, 2026University of Michigan

2026 Data Science and AI Summit

Keynote · Katherine Elkins

Katherine Elkins delivers a keynote at the University of Michigan’s 2026 Data Science and AI Summit, bringing questions from Humane Studies and human-centered AI into a major interdisciplinary gathering on data science and artificial intelligence.