NYU to Create Center for Indigenous Studies

Interim Provost Georgina Dopico today announced that NYU will establish a Center for Indigenous Studies and has recruited Eve Tuck – a prominent Indigenous Studies scholar at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the founding director of the Tkaronto CIRCLE lab – to serve as its founding director. Beginning January 1, 2024, she will hold a joint appointment at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and will be a James Weldon Johnson Professor.

Professor Tuck will consult with NYU faculty members engaged in the area of Native American and Indigenous Studies, and with Indigenous Students at NYU, in conceptualizing and building the new provostial center. Dedicated to collaborative Indigenous research and Indigenous Studies, the new center will seek to maximize the impact of the research of Indigenous Studies scholars across NYU’s schools, to provide new opportunities for cross-school and cross-discipline collaboration, to create an Indigenous Studies major for students at NYU (currently, there is an Native American and Indigenous studies minor), and ultimately to make NYU a prominent academic center in the field of Indigenous Studies. As part of NYU’s new faculty cluster hiring initiative, the institution has recruited three new faculty in Indigenous Studies over the past two years, and plans to recruit additional faculty this year and in upcoming years.

Interim Provost Dopico said, “It’s an honor to welcome Professor Tuck to NYU and to expand the University’s commitment to collaborative Indigenous studies. I look forward to working with Professor Tuck as we seek new ways to engage with and learn from Indigenous communities close to NYU and from those across the world. Professor Tuck’s collaborative approach will strengthen NYU and bring together scholars from multiple disciplines and geographies to advance innovative and important research.”

Professor Tuck said, “I look forward to learning as much as I can about efforts to grow Indigenous Studies and ethical research with Indigenous communities already underway at NYU, and bringing what I have learned (sometimes the hard way) from working at University of Toronto during a similar time of openness and investment. New York City is where I learned to be a scholar, and is the city at the heart of my theorizing and research practice. I am grateful to return to Lenapehoking to bring what I know about programs, research, and collaborations that make a real difference in the lives of Indigenous communities.”

NYU, which launched the Native Studies Forum in 2006, has numerous scholars of Indigenous studies across its schools and departments. The launch of this initiative will facilitate collaboration on research, exhibitions, public events and lectures, and other scholarly activities and projects.

At University of Toronto, Tuck was Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies and Canada Research Chair of Indigenous Methodologies with Youth and Communities. She is the founding Director of the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab, and was a William T Grant Foundation Scholar (2015-2020).

Tuck is Unangax̂ and is an enrolled member of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska. She grew up outside of her community, living in Pennsylvania as a child, and New York City as a young adult. She earned a PhD in Urban Education from The Graduate Center, The City University of New York.