Student Experience

An active program

We provide resources and programming for graduate students at Indiana University from a variety of interdisciplinary departments. In addition to offering a Ph.D. minor and graduate area certificates, our institute organizes speakers, events, and workshops each year for the benefit of graduate students.

Our institute supports two graduate student appointments, the assistant to the director and the Medieval Studies Journals Initiative research assistant, and gives out a number of fellowships and travel grants annually. As an interdisciplinary community, our graduate students have the opportunity to work with peers and faculty outside their home departments to broaden their research interests and receive support for their work.

What I loved best about MEST is the sense of community. Going to talks or seminars, you could always count on finding a friendly environment and people genuinely interested in you as a person. I met so many people beyond the ones I knew from my home department, and those connections have lasted--those are friends I still keep in touch with and see regularly.

Gina Brandolino, IU Ph.D. 2007 (now lecturer in English and the Sweetland Writing Center, University of Michigan)

Gain experience + prepare for your career

We host programming aimed at preparing students for future academic careers, such as the workshop, “Raiders of the Lost Archive," to prepare you for archival research. We have also hosted a research colloquia series in which featured graduate students presented their research alongside Indiana University faculty.

We offer opportunities for graduate students to gain experience organizing events and participating in departmental infrastructure, especially organizing the annual spring symposium and reader’s circle, which solicits papers from graduate students and faculty internationally, to showcase research being done in the medieval field.

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