A blog post by Karin Wulf Note: This is the last blog post by Karin Wulf in her role as executive director of the Omohundro Institute. Her final day at the head of the team is today. We congratulate her and wish her the best of luck in her new role as the Director and… Read More
By Karin Wulf, Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute If there is a year for blue sky thinking—aspirational, bold, and collaborative—this is it. In five years the United States will mark the semi-quincentennial—the 250th anniversary—of its Declaration of Independence. There will be fireworks, there will be speeches, and surely there will be hotdogs. There will also be a host… Read More
How the OI Plans to Support You in 2021, Vast Early America By Karin Wulf Welcome to 2021, a year like every other in which we know that the early American past we learn, listen, read, research, speak, teach, view, and write will be incredibly important. And yet, like the year that’s just ended, that importance seems turbo-charged for… Read More
by Karin Wulf This week I learned, via a paper my son is writing, that the molecules in rubber are polymers, meaning that they are shaped like a chain. In a resting state those molecules bunch up in a chaotic tangle, but, when you stretch them, like when you stretch a rubber band, the chains sort themselves into clean… Read More
By Karin Wulf For the last years the OI team—staff, Board, and Council, with feedback from the community—has been thinking about how to serve ever wider public and scholarly communities. We have expanded short-term and longer-term fellowship offerings through partnerships. We have expanded opportunities for students and early career scholars in particular to share their research. And we have… Read More
by Karin Wulf My first “update” email to the OI staff about COVID-19 was on Friday, March 13th. Over the last two months I’ve added to that email regularly in what is now an absurdly long thread, but which I keep going as a reminder of how little time has passed while so much has changed. We also opened… Read More
by Karin Wulf Around the world we are experiencing an extraordinary simultaneous crisis. COVID-19, the coronavirus that has caused a pandemic, is affecting people very differently across geography and individual circumstances but we are all in its grip. Here at the OI we are now working fully remotely, our home campus at William & Mary is closed and classes have moved… Read More