The Citizenship, Rights and Cultural Belonging Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence (TAE) is holding a meeting this week in hopes of adding more people to its group and expanding its research focuses.

The meeting will be open to faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students and will aim to broaden the TAE’s horizons. According to Alexandra Moore, co-chair of the TAE’s Steering Committee and professor of English, the meeting is meant to emphasize that the TAE is an open environment for all of Binghamton University’s students and faculty members.

“We wanted to hold the open house to demonstrate that we welcome faculty and grad students across the University to the TAE,” Moore wrote in an email. “Although it has had some specific themes — such as human rights — in the last few years, the overall umbrella of the TAE is broader than that, and we are eager to see how the TAE can best support today’s research interests in citizenship, rights and cultural belonging.”

Originally conceived in 2012 by University administrators, TAEs were created in order to link faculty members who share common interests in specific academic areas and themes. Currently, there are six TAEs, each designed to promote interdisciplinary research efforts. The Citizenship, Rights and Cultural Belonging TAE has members from various academic departments including history, English, anthropology and human development.

John Cheng, co-chair of the TAE’s Steering Committee and an associate professor of Asian and Asian American studies, wrote in an email that the themes within the TAE are meant to draw upon existing strengths in the University to offer new directions for the TAE’s future growth.

“The [academic areas] are transdisciplinary to encourage faculty across the University’s various colleges and departments, which are usually disciplinary-based, to find and collaborate on common interests and projects,” Cheng wrote.

The Citizenship, Rights and Cultural Belonging TAE has offered seed grants for faculty to pursue research, one of which established the Human Rights Institute (HRI) at the University, which Moore co-directs. The TAE has primarily concentrated its research, projects and resources within the HRI since multiple faculty members in the TAE work within the field of human rights, but Moore wrote that they are making efforts to expand, and hope to gain ideas from the upcoming meeting on new areas of research that include different disciplines.

“In terms of our focus, we take each of the terms in our title as a point of departure or as a place from which to ask questions,” Moore wrote. “Each of our key terms is a springboard to a range of research questions that don’t belong solely to one department. The idea is that we can do more innovative and far reaching work if we learn how to address problems or topics in interdisciplinary ways.”

The reception will take place on Thursday from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities conference room, Library North Room 1106.