About the Co-Lab

Rather than a center, we embrace a “collaborative laboratory” model, foregrounding the dynamism and future orientation of our work and goals.

Our Model: The Collaborative Laboratory

The Co-Lab at RWU brings together scholars, students, and members of the larger community committed to engaged learning and scholarship in the arts and humanities with a justice and equity lens. The Co-Lab at RWU fosters interdisciplinary connections among faculty and informs their research, scholarship, creative work, and teaching. The Co-Lab at RWU stages opportunities for students and scholars to learn from our community partners about their histories, heritage, and cultures. The Co-Lab at RWU brokers relationships among students, faculty, and members of the community and enables historically-informed engagement on social problems. The Co-Lab at RWU prepares future generations of professionals to enter into the world equipped with cultural humility and the capacity to engage equitably and justly with others. The Co-Lab at WU develops new methods and models for doing this kind of work across disciplines. The Co-Lab at RWU democratizes methods, empowering and supporting community members who seek to tell their own stories in ways that are meaningful to them and to all of us.

“Collaborative” describes the central role that our engagement and community partnerships have in our work, as well as our focus on interdisciplinary collaboration. This model also signals our commitment to connecting this effort to the One RWU plan, collaborating across the Providence, Bristol, and Law School campuses.

“Laboratory” denotes a space of practice, application, curriculum, and scholarship based on values of innovation and experimentation. Much more than a physical space for study or research, the collaborative laboratory also seeks to open up and occupy public space for dialogue, engagement, and inquiry.

The Co-Lab's Mission

The interdisciplinary Co-Lab at RWU is dedicated to sharing and fostering inclusive narratives, representations, and histories that make historically marginalized or erased populations audible and visible. The Co-Lab at RWU cultivates knowledge rooted in authentic, reciprocal, and ethical collaboration between scholars, communities, and practitioners in the arts and humanities. We collaborate with communities to transform our disciplines through scholarship, programs, and methods that center community perspectives, needs, and knowledge.

Our Methods and Values

The Co-Lab at RWU is committed to impactful work that supports community leadership, benefits communities, and minimizes unintended bias and unequal power dynamics.^[1]

Involvement: Community is meaningfully present at all levels of program and project development, implementation, and distribution or use.

Transparency: Information on methods, costs, benefits, risks, uses, and audiences for the work of The Co-Lab at RWU is shared with our partners.

Validity: We acknowledge and recognize our community partners as valid experts and collaborators in our work.

Ownership: We support community ownership of the work and results of Co-Lab programs and projects.

Value: To support equity, we engage in assessments of value for all of our projects. We investigate and analyze questions of what, for whom, and at what cost.

Accountability: The Co-Lab at RWU pledges accountability for programs that unintentionally cause harm and commits to processes of reconciliation and reparation should this occur.

Authorship: The work of The Co-Lab at RWU is collaborative and therefore the work of many authors and contributors. We acknowledge and recognize our community partners as co-creators and co-authors.

Our Leadership

Elizabeth Rosner

Faculty Director
Adjunct Faculty, Music

Jeffrey Meriwether

Dean, School of Humanities, Arts, and Education

Anne Proctor

Associate Dean, School of Humanities, Arts, and Education

Our Advisory Board 

Laura D’Amore

Associate Professor of Cultural Studies

Nicole Dyszlewski

Professor & Assistant Dean for Curricular Innovation

Brian Hendrickson

Associate Professor of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition

Haley Lott

Research and Student Engagement Librarian

Bernardo Motta

Associate Professor of Journalism

Fernanda Righi

Lecturer in Spanish

Elaine Stiles

Associate Professor of Historic Preservation