The Jackman Humanities Institute is pleased to invite proposals from humanities units in the Faculty of Arts and Science for an Artist in Residence for the 2027-28 academic year. Artists typically come for a semester but may be in residence for the full academic year, and must interact with the campus humanities community, as well as work on a project of their choosing that intersects with the Institute’s 2027-28 annual theme, Mediation/Contestation.
A humanities department or program in the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto must nominate and co-sponsor an artist for residency. The JHI provides a stipend, an office, and an interdisciplinary intellectual community, while the co-sponsoring unit provides a stipend and a production budget. Artists are expected to have substantial interaction with students over the course of the residency, e.g., through teaching, short-term seminars and workshops, public lectures, and open studio events.
Eligibility
All proposals for the 2027-28 JHI Artist in Residence must come directly from the Chair or Program Director of a humanities unit in the Faculty of Arts and Science on the UT-St. George campus and should indicate unit support for the application. Applications will be adjudicated by the JHI.
Instructions for Chairs/Directors
All applicants must complete the online application with the following documents in a single PDF:
- Statement of intent, describing what your unit plans to accomplish through his/her/their residency and how this artist would contribute to the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Arts and Science, and humanities communities (1-2 pages)
- Artist CV
- Sample of work (upload a sample of work or links to samples of work online)
- Sample of recent publications and/or publicity
Information Required for an Artist in Residence Proposal
The online application asks for the following information:
- Co-sponsoring unit
- Unit Chair/Director
- Contact Information for Unit Chair/Director (email address, telephone number)
- Name of proposed artist
- Contact information for proposed artist (email address, telephone number, website)
- Title of proposed residency project
- Proposed artist’s primary discipline
- Proposed artist’s secondary discipline (if applicable)
- Does the proposed artist work with new/electronic media?
- Length of proposed residency
- Other units in the Faculty of Arts and Science with which the proposed artist may be interested in working
- Specific individuals at the University of Toronto (faculty, students) with whom the proposed artist wants to make contact
- Committed support from the proposing unit
- If the proposed artist will be teaching as a part of the shared cost commitment, please provide details
Application Timeline
- Application Open: January 30, 2026
- Application Deadline: March 17, 2026, at 4:00pm EDT
- Selection Notification: March 30, 2026
Fellowship Period
- 4 months (Fall 2027)
- 4 months (Winter 2027)
- 8 months (Fall 2027 and Winter 2028)
2027-28 Theme: Mediation/Contestation
This theme attends to the tension inherent to acts of mediation between contested claims, spaces, and categories. It encourages us to delve into the processes of establishing and dismantling cultural hierarchies between categorical binaries such as high and low, beginning and end, or large and small, offering a richer understanding of the social dynamics that play out in such historically situated phenomena. It requires that we attend to processes, actors, and sites of mediation—the practices, practitioners, institutions, genres, circuits of communication, and, especially, power relations that either (re)affirm or contest boundaries. Mediation and Contestation invites us to revisit media and modalities in complex dynamics of cultural production more broadly.