This grant from the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund will be used to establish The Liberal Artisan, a Research and Creative Collaborative that reconnects labor and scholarship, the mind and the hand, and the material and the theoretical in a program fostering a way of being and working grounded in embodied communities of knowledge and skill.
Based at the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses, the collaborative (beginning in July 2026) will draw on robust resources across the state of Minnesota to:
- Build a consortium of scholars, practitioners, and workers across our campuses and communities.
- Develop skills and expertise among UMN faculty and staff in production technologies, crafts, materials, and worker experiences through workshops with local practitioners and arts and labor organizations.
- Cultivate research and teaching integration in material and experiential methods through scholarly reading groups, symposia, and a curriculum development workshop.
- Foster student and staff communities of craft among the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Duluth campuses.
Share experiential learning and University research with diverse campus and community audiences.
By creating spaces to holistically and collaboratively address societal challenges “we resist contemporary forces of alienation, disembodiment, and social fragmentation,” said Krista Twu, associate professor of Medieval & Renaissance studies at University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD).
The Liberal Artisan’s co-convenors are leaders in embodied historical research, teaching, and programming at UMN. Their projects include the Book of the North Project, the Lithics Lab and multiple initiatives based within the Center for Premodern Studies—the Premodern Food Lab, Full Spectrum (a workshop on color history and production), the Archive Crawl, Medieval Books in the Schools, and the Experiential Learning Series.
Project Leadership
- Dr. Krista Sue-Lo Twu, UMD Chair of Imagine Arts, Humanities, and Design, and Associate Professor of Medieval & Renaissance Studies, in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies
- Dr. Gilbert Tostevin, Professor in the Anthropology Department at University of Minnesota Twin Cities
- Dr. Lydia Garver, Associate Director of the Center for Premodern Studies