Faculty & Staff Research Symposium

This year’s theme for the Faculty and Staff Research Symposium, Intersections, invites us to reflect on a central paradox of contemporary life: although we live in a hyper-connected digital world and constantly witness the struggles, joys, and daily lives of others, many individuals and communities experience growing loneliness, polarization, alienation, and indifference in their everyday lives. We see more of one another’s lives than ever before, yet this heightened visibility can still leave individuals and communities feeling unseen, unheard, or misunderstood. For this reason, this year’s theme invites us to reflect on what it means to encounter one another through ideas, through scholarship, and through the communities we inhabit.

We think of intersections in broad terms. They may occur between elements in a scientific experiment, between texts and their interpretations, between people shaped by different countries, cultures, languages, and life experiences, and across political, religious, and social perspectives. Intersections also emerge through acts of listening, collaboration, discovery, and shared inquiry. In our campus context, this theme encourages us to imagine new forms of encounter across disciplines, across schools, and across the many intellectual and human spaces that shape university life. Intersections, then, become a way of sharing research while also cultivating dialogue, mutual recognition, and meaningful collaboration.

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