Jason Kelly

Transdisciplinarity, Public Scholarship, and the Anthropocene

Jason Kelly is a Professor and the Chair of the History Department at IUPUI. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Africana Studies and in American Studies. And, Professor Kelly is the Director of the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute (IAHI). Professor Kelly is a historian of 18th century British art, science, and society.

But like many scholars, his research focus has grown from these interests especially in his role as Director of IAHI, in which he directs three community-engaged research programs. The first of these programs is the Anthropocene Household Project which looks at the lived experience of global environmental change at the household level. In collaboration with the IUPUI School of Science, a key component of this project has been providing soil, dust, and water lead testing kits to reduce lead poisoning in central Indiana. The second of these programs is the Cultural Ecologies Project which looks at how cultural interventions transform cities. IAHI works with organizations and municipal entities to create more equitable and inclusive cultural landscapes. Finally, the COVID-19 Oral History Project is currently documenting the contemporary history of COVID-19.

These projects are connected by a concern with transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborations especially those that foreground the contributions of the arts and humanities. They are also connected by a concern with community-engaged scholarship. These projects not only seek to address their research topics but to create new models for university-based arts and humanities scholarship for the 21st century. Professor Kelly's translation of research is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.