Arts-Affiliated Institutes, Centers & Labs

The Kaplan Institute promotes expansive, interdisciplinary discussion and debate. Serving as a crossroads, clearing house and testing ground, the Institute nurtures ideas that transform into cutting-edge research and dynamic courses. It cultivates this work through an annual fellowship program for faculty working in the humanities, public humanities programs and training opportunities through its Public Humanities Graduate Practicum.

BAC at Northwestern University cultivates an interdisciplinary approach to Black arts. Launched in 2012, BAC seeks to engage myriad perspectives and strengthen Northwestern’s involvement in Black arts. It connects with a broader community of scholars, practitioners and community members through research, pedagogy, practice, and civic and community engagement.

HCI+  brings together researchers and practitioners from across the University to study, design and develop the future of human and computer interaction at home, work and play. The center draws upon Northwestern’s pioneering leadership in interaction and design research and supports researchers in their pursuit of new interaction paradigms to support a collaborative, sustainable and equitable society.

The Center for Latinx Digital Media aims to create knowledge about digital media in Latinx and Latin American communities across the Americas. It conducts research, teaches classes and organizes events to bring together students, scholars and practitioners from an interdisciplinary perspective.

The Center is a collaborative endeavor that pursues objects-based and objects-inspired scientific research to advance the role of science within art history, curatorial scholarship, archaeology and conservation. It strives enrich the breadth, scope and reach of scientific studies in the arts and in the wider field of conservation in the United States and abroad, by leveraging resources at the Art Institute of Chicago and materials-related departments at Northwestern University. This research and education initiative also provides enhanced training opportunities for participants through involvement in university-museum multidisciplinary programs.

CSEME seeks to understand the nature of the musical experience and how education can enhance its development. Faculty and fellows in the Center pursue solutions to problems of music teaching and learning through consistent and carefully designed programs of research reflecting multiple perspectives on complex issues. It acknowledges and values the growing number of questions related to the musical experience outside the walls of K-12 institutions.

The Buffett Institute's Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group aims to influence cultural and political discourse on the climate emergency. Combining the media arts with critical frames offered by the environmental humanities and the rigor of climate science, it illuminates the everyday experiences of people living on the front lines of the climate emergency. 

The Institute for New Music serves as a hub for all contemporary music activities at Northwestern. Housed in the Bienen School of Music, the institute presents numerous events over the course of the academic year, including workshops, lectures, master classes, performances, residencies of visiting ensembles and composers, and a biennial new music conference and festival. Through these activities and more, the institute provides ample opportunities for the study and exploration of new music.

Knight Lab is a community of designers, developers, students and educators working on experiments designed to push journalism into new spaces. The Lab provides an open, collaborative environment for interdisciplinary exploration and conversation, where students and professionals learn together and from one another. 

The MADE Lab researches inequity in media and technology systems and experiments with cultivating equitable systems. The lab views equity as a deep, ongoing process of repairing generations of systemic oppression. They use creative and participatory research and development to address issues of equity and prioritize the process of making over the final product. MADE projects experiment with repairing culture, while MADE research investigates barriers to cultural equity. MADE programs share knowledge with the public.

The Music Cognition Lab is an interdisciplinary space focusing on the experiences of both music creation and music listening. Research projects have explored musical communication, the perception of tonality, rhythm and meter, musical analogy and metaphor, musical transmission, music and emotion, cross-cultural analysis and metacognition, among other topics. The lab employs methods from cognitive psychology, computational modeling and social science research to better understand these questions.

The Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts creatively examines representations of mental illness and health on screen and supports students in the production of original media art works that challenge stereotypes.

SLIPPAGE is an interdisciplinary research group that explores connections between performance and emergent technology in the service of theatrical storytelling and the telling of alternative histories. Founded in 2003, SLIPPAGE produces productions, conferences, workshops, and artist exchanges that mark social progress via research in performance.