The Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (CENHS) is the newest part of Rice University’s landmark Energy and Environment Initiative (E2I), the first effort to involve all the intellectual resources of a major research university in addressing today’s most pressing energy and environmental challenges. CENHS is likewise a first-of-its-kind: the only research center in t
he world specifically designed to sponsor research on the energy/environment nexus across the arts, humanities and social sciences. CENHS builds upon over two years of work by the Cultures of Energy Faculty Working Group at Rice, which helped to pioneer the field of interdisciplinary energy humanities in conjunction with a Sawyer Seminar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. CENHS currently has four active research clusters — Arts & Media, Catastrophe & Aesthetics, Ethics & Philosophy, and Social Analytics – each of which is tasked with developing a different area of energy and environmental research in the human sciences. On campus, we are organizing activities to bring together faculty and students interested in energy and environmental research, offering opportunities for junior and senior research fellowships, and sponsoring events to connect with the public. At the same time working together with universities in Canada, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom, CENHS is helping to build the first international research network in energy and environmental human sciences. In the coming year, we will be actively cultivating contacts and relationships with local energy/environment-related organizations in Houston and expanding our network of contacts in the energy industry. We have partnered with the Rice Arts Initiative and made a major investment in helping Rice and Houston to become an internationally recognized center for energy and environmental arts, media and performance. In the future, we hope to expand our activities. We would like to create the nation’s first in-residence energy journalism fellowship. We would like to extend our international research network to become truly global, involving new partners in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Australia, making CENHS into a global trading zone for expertise in this growing field. We would like to sponsor high-level, frank and substantive discussions between academic leaders, industry leaders and the public about how to solve our pressing energy and environmental dilemmas.
