"A $1.1 million grant to the Division of Arts and Humanities last spring called for pilot projects that would advance the Theme’s three overarching pillars, while identifying signature areas of study within the division. In June 2016, the division awarded the funds to eleven pilot projects...in the 2016-17 academic year." Two of the eleven pilot projects involve Deparment of Dance faculty Harmony Bench and Norah Zuniga-Shaw:  

• Be the Street: A Performance Studies Project on Human Mobility and Placemaking brings faculty and graduate students across five fields (Theatre, Dance, Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Studies, and City Planning) who work in the interdisciplinary area of Performance Studies together with Columbus community groups to create a series of ethnographically-informed Theatre or Dance productions on the subject of migration and/or community transformation.
  
  Project Team: Ana Elena Puga (Theatre and Spanish and Portuguese), Principal Investigator; Harmony Bench (Dance); Katey Borland (Comparative Studies); Ignacio Corona (Spanish and Portuguese); Jesus Lara (Architecture); Paloma Martinez-Cruz (Spanish and Portuguese); Barry Shank (Comparative Studies); Shilarna Stokes (Theatre)

• Collaboration for Humane Technologies will foster arts-driven, interdisciplinary research to take action on the challenges that impact life and livability in the 21st century. At the core of the project are two Pop-Up Collaborations supported and extended by curricular offerings as well as innovative public events, documentation, and dissemination. The first Pop-Up will focus on Humane Technologies, exploring new ways to interact with dynamic mediums that access our multisensory human capacities. Read more>>>
  
  Project Team: Norah Zuniga-Shaw (Dance), Principal Investigator; Peter K. Chan (Design); Isla Hansen (ACCAD and Art); Alan Price (ACCAD and Design); Scott Swearingen (Design); E. Scott Denison (Design)

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(Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme website)