The Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies
The center supports multiple and varied programs that bridge the worlds of academia and the wider community. These interdisciplinary programs include sponsorship of public lectures, museum programs for the public, and community exchange through workshops, projects, and collaborations. Program subjects include indigenous material culture, oral history, environment and climate change, education, food, and health.
The Ortiz Center was founded as a collaborative endeavor between the Department of Anthropology and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico for the purpose of academic outreach within and beyond the campus environment. The center is named for the late UNM anthropology professor, MacArthur fellow, and native of Ohkay Owingeh (formerly San Juan Pueblo), Alfonso Ortiz. In keeping with Dr. Ortiz’s vision, the center strives to make academic knowledge relevant, useful, and accountable to the university and the community at large, as well as to enhance, inform, and support community scholars, artists, writers, policy makers, and researchers whose work is relevant to the study of human life and experience. The Ortiz Center thus seeks to serve as a site and resource for the pursuit of knowledge through inclusive dialogue, exchange, and innovation.
Spring 2025 Call For Project Proposals
Deadline to Apply: March 14, 2025
We invite faculty members, staff, curators, and graduate students to apply for funding to support collaborative initiatives in the arts, humanities and social sciences that bridge academia and the wider community. Priority will be given to proposals that include members of the Anthropology Department and/or the Maxwell Museum as project directors, collaborators, or consultants. We support fully-developedcollaborative projects, with budgetsup to $10,000.
Proposals may include but are not limited to lectures, museum exhibits, creative works, workshops, conferences, and research and creative projects that focus on material culture and oral history, environment and climate change, education,language use and reclamation, food, health, or any other topic of interest to participating communities.
Faculty, staff, and graduate students from other programs on campus may apply for awards up to $5,000 for the Spring 2025 call for proposals. Ortiz will provide matching funds for projects, to establish and solidify partnerships and research priorities, to complete a project already in place, or to initiate a longer-term project.
Application Form and Guidelines:
Spring 2025 Ortiz Center Grant Application. (funding/ortiz-funding-application-2025.pdf)
For more detailed guidelines and instructions, click here.
Email the completed application to mwgraves@unm.edu by 5pm March 14, 2025.
Interdisciplinary and Community Collaboration
The Ortiz Center seeks to coalesce themes identified in research by creating public spaces for anthropology and related spheres of ahumanities emerging in contemporary contexts. Key to this process is engagement at the University of New Mexico beyond thetraditional routes in academia by employing public anthropology to interconnect themes to the idea of community and humankind. Ortiz Center activities serve as an organic nexus for starting conversations and extending dialogue towards unforeseenpossibilities and opportunities.
Land Acknowledgement
The Ortiz Center endorses the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology’s Land Acknowledgment as post to their website: https://maxwellmuseum.unm.edu/
The University of New Mexico and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology sit on and among the traditional homelands of multiple sovereign nations. We acknowledge the deep connections of the Pueblo, Diné, and Apache peoples to the land and the significant contributions of past, present, and future Indigenous peoples and communities to life and culture in the greater Southwest, the United States, and the world at large. In acknowledging these connections, we express our gratitude for the opportunity to live, work, and learn on this land. We honor our relationships with Indigenous peoples and commit to working towards reconciling injustices, restoring voices, and realizing community going forward.
The University of New Mexico also has a land acknowledgment, which can be found at: https://diverse.unm.edu/
