Established by the Arizona Board of Regents in 2018 

Applied Intercultural Arts Research (AIAR) is the first Graduate Interdisciplinary Program (GIDP) designed in collaboration with the UA College of Fine Arts. The program prepares graduates with the training and skills needed to conduct intercultural research in the arts, and to consider how knowledge of the arts can be applied to other disciplinary areas to address humanistic, social, and scientific issues affecting our communities and our interconnected world.

AIAR promotes dialogue between interdisciplinary scholars with a primary or secondary research interest related to music, dance, theater, film, visual arts, or other artistic cultural practices. The applied emphasis invites students to imagine how the arts can be used in and beyond academic settings to enhance the health and well-being of individuals, societies, and environments. The intercultural focus trains students to use arts-based research to address issues in ways that take into consideration both cultural diversity and the confluence of multiple cultural perspectives. The AIAR core curriculum—originally built on the foundations of the interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology—emphasizes the importance of intercultural, ethnographic, and arts-based research practices, and trains students with the skills necessary to pursue research in community-based and collaborative interdisciplinary and interprofessional settings.

In addition to identifying an artistic area of focus for the AIAR major, students choose a secondary area of expertise from outside the arts in order to expand their interdisciplinary research agenda. Examples of some of the pathways of current AIAR students include research at the crossroads of Chinese dance/wellness, psychology/music, visual arts/neuroscience, art/disability education, ethnomusicology/public health, and archives studies/environmental sustainability. Related areas could include sound studies, ethnochoreology, visual anthropology, and other arts-related topics connected to the humanities, and social, health and natural sciences. Through the AIAR program, we aim to prepare students interested in the arts for exciting careers in interdisciplinary academic research and/or applied work in the public sector.

For more information, please review the Applied Intercultural Arts Research GIDP Graduate Student Handbook.