We are thrilled to be part of a team that has been awarded $200K USD from the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes with the support of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to run a Global Humanities Institute in 2025 on the topic of “Indigenous Mobilities, Tourism, and Racial Capitalism”.

The Institute will explore how Indigenous communities creatively respond to the cascading effects of mega-development projects and mass tourism—such as neglect of local needs, dispossession and displacement, destruction of local ecosystems, and other consequences—at various sites around the world.

Guiding questions include:

• What are the pressing concerns that Indigenous communities have regarding tourism and mega-development projects?
• How has this played out in different local contexts and on the land itself?
• What are strategies for centering Indigenous experiences and demands in the face of megadevelopment?
• How can a humanities-centered approach help address these crises and imagine new futures?
• Is it possible to construct futures in which Indigeneity, non-human relations, tourism, and mega-development goals align?

The main institute meeting will be hosted by Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán and held in Yucatán, Mexico in January 2026. A lead-up event will be held at the Humanities Research Centre ANU in January 2025. There will be an application process to fund up to 20 interdisciplinary scholars, with special focus on early career and emerging scholars, as well as community partners, to join the main institute meeting.

Professor Kylie Message-Jones (HRC) and Dr Yujie Zhu (CHMS) are leading the ANU component of the GHI in partnership with international collaborators from The Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota (Professor Bianet Castellanos), The Unidad de Proyectos Sociales (Center for Social Projects) at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY) (Professor Samuel François Jouault ), Co’ox Mayab, Alba Sud, The Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry at the University of Arizona (Yadira Cabarello and Professor Javier Duran) and the University of California San Diego Department of Communication (Matilde Córdoba Azcárte).

The full announcement and timeline of the 2025 Global Humanities Institute is here. Queries can be directed to Kylie.Message-Jones@anu.edu.au