Research Centers & Initiatives

The College of Arts & Sciences is home to a wide range of centers and initiatives that foster innovation in research, teaching, and public engagement. From advancing multilingual education and economic policy to exploring questions of justice, culture, health, and the humanities, these programs reflect Georgetown’s commitment to scholarship that shapes communities and informs the world.

Assessment and Evaluation Language Resource Center (AELRC)

The AELRC’s primary mission is to facilitate useful assessment and evaluation practices that help foreign language educators innovate and improve their programs, ensure accountability to students and society, and articulate the value of foreign language studies in the world today.

Visit the AELRC website

Early Learning Project (ELP)

Dr. Rachel Barr established this program and works with graduate students, undergraduate students, and a staff of full-time research assistants in conducting the studies. Participation in studies is completely voluntary, and we rely solely on parent-child volunteers.

Visit the ELP website

Gender ⁺ Justice Initiative (G+JI)

The Gender+ Justice Initiative (G+JI) aims to build on the long-standing, path-breaking research being done on intersectional gender and racial justice across Georgetown’s departments and campuses; to catalyze scholarship and advocacy in these areas; and to make Georgetown a dynamic hub of knowledge production, community engagement, and policy development on intersectional issues of gender, racial, and economic justice.

Visit the G+JI website

Georgetown Center for Economic Research (GCER)

The primary goal is to foster an environment of open and rigorous inquiry into economic policy issues and problems. Housed within the Department of Economics at Georgetown University, the Center brings together economists from across the University and elevates Georgetown’s leadership role in informing policy.

Visit the GCER website

Georgetown Humanities Initiative (GHI)

The Georgetown Humanities Initiative aims to support the research and teaching of the University’s humanistic scholars. The Initiative embraces innovative scholarship that takes various forms, including traditional methods, digital approaches, and arts and performance.

Visit the GHI website

Global Irish Studies (GIS)

GIS has three core aims: engaging the community; inspiring students; and developing research. By staging timely and meaningful public events, supporting innovative teaching, and facilitating student and faculty research, GIS hopes to build the most exciting Irish Studies program in North America.

Visit the GIS website

Initiative for Multilingual Studies (IMS)

The Initiative for Multilingual Studies is committed to advancing multilingualism in education in the U.S. and across the globe. It supports its members in the design, funding, conduct, and communication of research that fosters multilingualism as part of the solution to high-quality education for all.

Visit the IMS website

Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology I(SM)2

The goal of current soft matter research is to understand and control the molecular-scale structure of soft matter in order to engineer new classes of materials. Georgetown’s Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology, or I(SM)2, launched in 2011 as the result of $6.9 million construction grant from NIST, serves to catalyze the development of fundamental principles and practical measurement tools that can be applied to soft matter synthesis and precision measurement and characterization (metrology).

Visit the I(SM)2 website

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History is, as its name suggests, dedicated to critical inquiry into the history and culture of Russia and Eurasia. Since 2000, Kritika has been dedicated to internationalizing the field and making it relevant to a broad interdisciplinary audience. 

Visit the Kritika website

Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice

The Lannan Center at Georgetown University is a dynamic literary and cultural institution devoted to the public engagement of the contemporary written arts and to enriching the artistic and intellectual life of the Georgetown campus and community. This the Center does through a range of public events, interdisciplinary collaborations, and creative writing courses.

Visit the Lannan Center website

Medical Humanities Initiative

The Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative is a university-wide collaboration between Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences and Georgetown University Medical Center. We promote learning, development, and discovery at the intersection of the humanities, health, and healing.

Visit The Medical Humanities Initiative website
View of Healy Hall from Virginia

Music Sustainability Initiative

The Music Sustainability Initiative is an interdisciplinary project advancing the cultural, economic, and policy conditions that promote a more just and sustainable future for music.

Visit the Music Sustainability Initiative website

Prisons and Justice Initiative (PJI)

The Georgetown University Prisons and Justice Initiative (PJI) connects people affected by mass incarceration with opportunities to shape their own futures. In prisons, in our local communities, and on campus, PJI aims to empower currently and formerly incarcerated people as scholars, leaders, professionals, entrepreneurs, and advocates.

Visit the PJI website

Tech & Society Initiative

Tech & Society is a cross-campus ecosystem creating novel approaches for interdisciplinary collaboration, research, understanding, and action—all at the intersection of technology, ethics, and governance. We bring together ten centers and programs at Georgetown that are deeply immersed in particular parts of the technology and society equation: ethics, privacy, national security, law, policy, governance, and data—and we are building connective tissue between them.

Visit the Tech & Society website