In the 2025/26 round of the initiative, launched by the Hop and the Vice Provost for Research with funding from the Office of the Provost, $100,000 was awarded to four faculty-led and five student-led projects following threads from engineering, astronomy, geology, environmental studies and computer science, and engaging topics right here on campus as well as in the Upper Valley and across the globe.
2025-26 Grant Recipients
The Dartmouth Rose Window
Nicola Camerlenghi, Associate Professor, Department of Art History | Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art, Hood Museum
Since 1977, Dartmouth has owned a late-medieval, Italian rose window disassembled in 65 stone blocks. Now in the collection of the Hood Museum of Art, the fragmentary window constitutes an opportunity for artistic and scholarly intervention to revitalize it for campus display. This project combines geological, engineering and art historical analyses with digital modeling to devise a compelling plan for installation that integrates teaching, research and creativity.
Entangled Ecologies
Kate Salesin, Lecturer, Department of Computer Science | Zenovia Toloudi, Associate Professor of Architecture, Department of Studio Art
in collaboration with the Department of Studio Art
This project explores ways in which fashion can be elevated to reflect living systems through the combination of technology, art and design. Research portions will integrate technology, including 3D fabrication, motion, sensors and lights, into fashion pieces that respond to the person wearing the clothing, the audience and the environment. The project culminates in an immersive fashion show.
Hands That Speak, Art That Heals: Mónica Lozano's "La Trenza" (The Braid) and Intercultural Health and Wellness
Israel Reyes, Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese | Maria-Clara De Greiff, Administrative Associate, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Building on collaborations in the Migrant Lives and Labor curriculum, the faculty will invite documentary photographer Mónica Lozano to present "La Trenza" (The Braid), an installation she co-created in 2023 by weaving together objects discarded by migrants crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. Through participatory weaving, photography and film, students, faculty and community partners will co-create a collective installation that reframes migration as presence, relationality and continuity, positioning art as method, research and a catalyst for connection and shared well-being.
Conduit: A Displacement in Space and Time
James Mahoney, Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science
By creating a pair of sculptural wood stereoscopic viewing installations, each with live video feeds from across campus, this installation establishes a tangible link between the arts and sciences. The work facilitates unencumbered stereoscopic viewing of another place, extending that sense of wonder by also employing AI generation to periodically embed magical moments into the live video feed. The result is a unique blend of reality and imagination that spans space and time.
Activating Material Memory: Textile Ecologies of Body, Loom, and Environment
Hayri Dortdivanlioglu, Postdoctoral Fellow at Society of Fellows, Department of Studio Art
Working outdoors with cyanotype-treated threads, the artist will use sunlight and exposure time to chemically register the conditions of making, treating embodied engagement with threads and the loom. Through this process, weaving is explored as a form of material computing, foregrounding the temporal, embodied, and technological forces that typically remain invisible in finished textiles. The loom becomes a site of convergence for body, tool and environment, yielding a textile that functions as a material archive of ecological and gestural traces.
Spectral: Translating Solar Data into Spatial Sound
Yuening Cai GR
A multichannel immersive sound installation that translates solar radiation data from different wavelength bands into a spatialized sonic environment. Drawing on astronomical measurement, sound design and spatial audio techniques, the work renders the sun's invisible energetic dynamics perceptible through sound. By transforming scientific data into an embodied listening experience, Spectral explores the shifting relationship between human perception, technological mediation and the tension between stability and uncertainty in our understanding of natural phenomena.
Sacred Harp Singing: Exploring the Effects of Social Synchrony on Community Building
Simon Thomas '27
The Sacred Harp tradition has brought singers and communities together since its inception in the mid-1700s. This project will combine data collection methods—ranging from participant observation to EEG scans—to explore the questions of body synchrony and its impact on communal strength. The work combines music, neuroscience and anthropology to shed light on the reclamation of community. It will culminate in an open-to-the-public singing event.
The Analog Way: Craft as a Contemporary Artistic Inquiry
Jay Yim '25
An interdisciplinary initiative that reframes hands-on making as a form of research, creativity and learning. Drawing on Sloyd and Montessori traditions, the project centers on the development of a new, credit-bearing course built from modular workshops integrating woodworking, ceramics, textiles and metalworking with engineering, environmental studies and psychology. Through pilot offerings in the Summer Scholars 2026 program, students will explore how working directly with materials builds creative confidence, problem-solving skills and well-being. It will produce a replicable curriculum, a short documentary film and a public exhibition showcasing student work and the transformative power of embodied craft.
Breaking the Spectacle: A Conceptual Ethnographic Film on Indigenous Ritual and the Impossibility of Representation
Heyi Zhang '27
How can film engage forms of knowledge that exceed anthropological description and resist visual spectacle? Drawing on ongoing fieldwork with indigenous ritual specialists in Sichuan, China, the film experiments with absence, opacity and non-representational strategies to challenge colonial expectations of transparency. The project advances an arts-driven ethnographic method and will be accompanied by a written manifesto and exhibition.
For questions about the Arts Integration Initiative, please contact samantha.c.lazar@dartmouth.edu.