Working Groups

The Karsh Institute’s Democratic Concepts Working Group brings together a multidisciplinary group of faculty and postdoctoral fellows to discuss readings on a shared area of interest, exploring core democratic values and concepts across history and cultures. These seminars aim to leverage the expertise of UVA’s faculty in the democracy space toward mutual learning and instruction while building a sense of community across departments and units. Faculty members represent various fields of study, including politics, history, classics, philosophy, religious studies, commerce, media studies, and music. Co-convened by history professor Emily Burrill and politics professor Kevin Duong, each session is led by a different faculty member and/or postdoctoral fellow.  

The Gun Violence Solutions Project Working Group at UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy supports activities and research on issues related to gun violence. This pan-University group is part of a larger project on gun violence solutions at UVA, funded by the Office of the Provost. With participation from schools and units across Grounds—in both UVA’s academic and medical divisions—this working group supports faculty and student research, programming, and course-enhancement funding on a range of topics related to gun violence.

The Aesthetics of Democracy in the Afterlives of War Working Group brought visiting artists, curators, and scholars to the University of Virginia to discuss artistic and curatorial practices that reimagine democracy in the wake of war. Other deliverables included a volume featuring interviews with artists and curators—not as a representation of the parallel paths of the members, but to demonstrate how democratic aesthetics are practiced through new juxtapositions and collaboration.  

Promoting interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and cultural production, the Black Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute at the Karsh Institute elevated feminist Black and Indigenous studies through a “fellows-in-residence” program. The intensive instruction focused on theories, methods, curricular design, pedagogies, and community-building work through summer institutes—establishing the first “Black and Indigenous Studies Certificate Program” in the U.S. South. 

It is critical to put the tools of reparative history in the hands of students in K–12 and at the university level. Scholars from across UVA worked with the Karsh Institute’s Home Places: Mapping Black Virginia Working Group to create a digital storytelling project that identifies the untold narratives of Black communities throughout Virginia, from Reconstruction to the present day. The working group also offered resources for public school students to produce family and community histories and for documenting Black place-making on Grounds at UVA.

The IS Working Group at the Karsh Institute was focused on best practices for research, teaching, and university administration (including admissions) in Native American and Indigenous studies. By conducting listening sessions with leaders and citizens from tribal nations in Virginia, IS implemented reforms and hosted public events to promote mutual exchanges of knowledge about Indigenous history, political philosophy, and governance. 

Democracy is experienced in the places we live, work, and cast our ballots. But local communities are rife with inequities—divided by class and race, by neighborhoods, by patterns of surveillance and violence, by vulnerabilities to climate change, by access to essential public services. The LEAD Working Group at the Karsh Institute explored potential remedies at the local level.  

The Local Knowledge Working Group at the Karsh Institute focused on how to expand the collection and sharing of historical and contemporary information about Charlottesville, VA. The group’s goal was to inform discourse and policy through three areas: the promotion of Cvillepedia.org as a free tool for sharing local research; an environmental scan of the local “information ecosystem”; and the production of a half-day symposium exploring how to democratize local information.

In the United States, who is allowed to be a citizen? Who deserves to be a citizen? What are the rights and responsibilities of resident non-citizens? Many of these questions were asked in antiquity as well. The Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship Working Group at the Karsh Institute examined different aspects of Greek and Roman citizenship: the value of legal and political definitions; how citizenship is displayed through art and the spaces of the city; how citizenship might have been taught; and why ancients valued citizenship.