Washington University is pleased to announce the ninth year of Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry, a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Program. The aims of this program are to broaden and enrich the training of a select group of newly qualified Ph.D.s by placing them in an environment with highly developed expectations of trans-disciplinary research and teaching. Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry seeks to address the cultural and institutional nature of interdisciplinarity itself and to create conditions in which interdisciplinary approaches to work in the humanities and social sciences can more easily flourish both within and outside the departmental traditions of a research university. 

The means to these ends are to be found in the framework of Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry with its mentor relationship between postdoctoral fellows and senior faculty; its seminar in Theory and Methods; the placement of postdoctoral fellows within our undergraduate curriculum; and the postdoctoral Steering Committee composed of senior faculty, drawn from across the humanities and social sciences, who have shown commitment to interdisciplinary work. The Steering Committee will serve as the bridge between the multi-disciplinary activities exemplified by the Mellon program and the departmental structure of the University.