Mapping a global humanities dialogue.
Founded in 2003, the Network grew as a forum where established traditions meet emerging practices—building a traveling conference alongside journals, books, and year-round community.
Exploring the ideas, practices, and futures of the humanities.
The New Directions in the Humanities Research Network brings together scholars, educators, writers, and cultural practitioners to examine how the humanities make meaning—across traditions and innovations, disciplines and publics. Member-based and scholar-led, the Network advances research that connects interpretation with method, and critique with practice.
Founded in 2003 under the leadership of Tom Nairn, the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network began as a space for renewing the humanities by putting tradition and innovation into active conversation. Nairn’s work on nationalism and modernity shaped the Network’s early direction, encouraging scholars to look at how concepts, forms, and methods travel across literature, culture, language, politics, and public life. From its first meeting at the University of the Aegean in Rhodes, the Network set out to link critical inquiry with teaching, publishing, and broader civic dialogue.
Over more than two decades, the International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities has partnered with universities and cultural organizations around the world. Hosts have included the Monash University Centre in Prato (Italy), Cambridge University (UK), the University of Carthage in Tunis (Tunisia), the American University of Paris (France), the University of California, Los Angeles (USA), the Universidad de Granada (Spain), Centre Mont-Royal (Montréal), Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), Universidad CEU San Pablo (Madrid), the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), the University of Illinois at Chicago, Imperial College London, the University of Pennsylvania, Sorbonne Université, Sapienza University of Rome, and the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, among others. These collaborations have shaped the conference’s multilingual, international character and its steady engagement with new publics and emerging questions.
Plenary speakers have included many of the most influential figures in contemporary humanities: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Juliet Mitchell, Tariq Ali, David Christian, Sir Jack Goody, Krishan Kumar, Patrick Baert, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Ted Honderich, Joan Copjec, Kate Soper, Douglas Kellner, Barbara Eckstein, Ewa Domańska, and Gabi Lombardo, among others. Their contributions have helped situate the Network as a place where philosophical, cultural, political, and technological debates converge.
Tom Nairn, Founding Chair and Editor (2003–2015), established the editorial ethos and public-facing mission. Since 2016, Asun López-Varela (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) has served as Chair and Editor.
The Network’s publishing environment centers on the New Directions in the Humanities Journal Collection, which brings together work in critical cultural studies, communication and linguistics, literary humanities, civic and political studies, and humanities education. The journals use rubric-guided, double-anonymous peer review and welcome contributions ranging from theoretical analyses to practice-based research and case studies.
Each year, the New Directions in the Humanities International Award for Excellence recognizes one outstanding article selected from the ten highest-ranked peer-reviewed submissions. Award-winning work has addressed subjects ranging from ecocriticism and political theory to trauma studies, literary analysis, and cross-cultural aesthetics. Winners receive Open Access publication and an invited conference presentation.
Longer projects are supported by the New Directions in the Humanities Book Imprint, which publishes monographs and edited collections across the full breadth of humanities inquiry. The imprint is inclusive by design, welcoming authors from varied backgrounds and offering Open Access pathways so that scholarship can circulate widely across academic and non-academic publics.
Today, the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network continues to bring together scholars, educators, writers, and cultural practitioners who are asking how the humanities define, interrogate, and expand our understanding of “the human.” Through its global conferences, journals, book imprint, and year-round CGScholar community, the Network provides a member-based, scholar-led forum for rethinking humanistic knowledge in a rapidly changing world.
We are thankful for the leadership of the following Research Network Chairs. Founding Chair: Tom Nairn. His work on nationalism and modernity helped define the Network’s editorial ethos and public-facing mission. Current Chair: Asun López-Varela (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). The Advisory Board offers strategic counsel on conference themes and editorial standards, ensuring rigorous, practice-informed scholarship.
Current Chair and Editor
(2016 - )
Founding Chair and Editor
(2003-2015)
The International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities has a rich history of featuring leading and emerging voices from the field, including:
Professor, Columbia University, New York, USA
(2003, 2007)
Director, Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies, University College London, London, UK
(2003, 2005)
Writer & Filmmaker, London, UK
(2003, 2006)
Research Fellow, Durham University, Durham, UK
(2003)
Professor, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
(2004)
Professor, St John’s College, Cambridge, UK
(2004, 2005)
Professor, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
(2004, 2007)
Head of Department of Sociology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
(2005)
Professor, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
(2005)
Professor Emeritus, University College London, London, UK
(2005, 2007)
Professor, Brown University, Providence, USA
(2006)
Visiting Professor, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
(2006)
Distinguished Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
(2010)
Assistant Professor, Digital Humanities, University of British Columbia at Okanagan, Canada
(2015)
English Department and the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA
(2016)
Associate Professor, Department of History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland; Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, USA
(2017)
European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities, Director, Brussels, Belgium
(2019)
Partnerships extend the scholar-led mission of the Network—linking universities, societies, and cultural institutions to reimagine the humanities for changing publics. Recent and recurring collaborators include:
