Are you interested in joining a new kind of research experience this summer? 2025 OUR Immersive Research Internship Experience (IRIE) offers a different type of research experience for humanities and cultural research, offering an opportunity for students to explore research questions in a group setting this summer. IRIE provides an outlet for students looking to deepen their understanding of cultural and social issues while closely working with a mentor on an original research project. 

To participate in the 2025 OUR Immersive Research Internship Experience, all you have to do is register for any open seat of OURS199. 

The internship period lasts from June 2, 2025 through July 25, 2025 (which overlaps with the 8-week UMD summer session). IRIE Research Interns commit to 15 hours per week of on-site research engagement. Each IRIE research group will determine exact schedules, generally overlapping business hours (8:00 am to 5:00 pm). 

Each section of OURS199 is connected with a specific FIRE stream (in the section notes provided on TESTUDO). If you are able to enroll in a section with open seats, you will join that stream for the OUR Immersive Research Internship Experience.

Current IRIE Research Group Availability
As of now, we have seats available in:

• OURS199-0108: Visualizing Social Justice
  • In Visualizing Social Justice, we explore the importance of storytelling by engaging in digital humanities projects with the goal of making the stories of our past more accessible. From data visualization to archival research, students in IRIE’s VSJ stream will have the opportunity to contribute to ground-breaking ways of telling forgotten stories and contributing to public discourse about social justice. 
• OURS199-0109: Music & Social Identity
  • Music & Social Identity will allow you to conduct original research in the humanities, focusing on cultural and music history. We will complete archival research to connect social & political movements to popular music and UMD’s history, and then create a public exhibit that will be on display in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library for the rest of the summer and through the fall 2025 semester.

To further clarify:

• No additional approvals or confirmations are needed to enroll in OURS199 for Summer I (we are using the 8-week summer term, but your registration will be for Summer I).
• We are not able to add any additional seats for any OURS199 section.

If you enroll in OURS199, you should be careful about dropping the course and/or changing sections. Other students may be searching simultaneously and could quickly take your spot. Also, if you wish to waitlist multiple streams/sections, please ensure you are happy to join any of them. You will lose your spot on the other waitlists when you join a stream from the waitlist.  

OURS199 Tuition & Fees:

Participating in the OUR Immersive Research Internship Experience requires enrollment in a 3-credit UMD summer course (OURS199) with summer-based tuition and fees. This course’s tuition and fees and associated payment policies and due dates are available on the linked Extended Studies web pages.