Ng | Residential Education

Ng House features a fabulous lounge and kitchen, where students can cook, socialize, and enjoy the many events that the community puts on. There are reading nooks and small work-spaces on every floor; and a reading room, a music practice room, and a creative workspace. We are privileged to have a Stanford graduate student and postdoctoral fellow living in the house as part of our staff team. In addition, we have a Visiting Scholar suite which allows us to bring faculty into the Ng community to share their interests and areas of study with the students in a residential setting.

Find Ng on the Stanford Searchable Map here

Meet the Lantana Resident Fellow

Resident Fellows, or RFs, are Stanford faculty and senior administrative staff who live in apartments or cottages adjacent to student residences and serve as leaders for their communities. Michael Shanks is an archaeologist and professor of Classics.

Michael's fascination with the landscapes of prehistoric Europe and city life in antiquity is the basis for his interest in all manner of archaeological topics - long term patterns in history, the workings of design and innovation, and heritage, that current fascination with the presence of the past in our senses of cultural identity.

Michael grew up in the industrial north of England and, as a FLI (first generation low-income) student, went on to secure doctorates from Cambridge University UK, Gothenburg Sweden, and an honorary degree from Roskilde in Denmark, the university that pioneered student-centered learning in European higher education. He has run studios in Stanford's d.school, and teaches in the programs in Writing and Rhetoric, Science Technology and Society, and Urban Studies, as well as Classics and Archaeology.

Michael advised the Mayor of Rotterdam on economic and cultural policy for ten years, and was a faculty director of the Revs Program at Stanford, promoting the study of the archaeology of the automobile as a key component of contemporary car design (his lab did the research for a Chrysler concept car and he continues to work with Nissan Motor Corporation). He has always cherished collaboration with artists as well as engineers, holding that archaeologists do not discover the past but work creatively with remains, caring about the past with a view to the future. A focus on such past-present connections in visual media and contemporary performing arts has involved a series of works under the heading of theatre/archaeology - site specific works deep in the forest of rural Wales, guided walks through contested landscapes in Europe, deep mappings of digital divides in California.

About the Humanities Theme

Opened in the fall of 2015, Ng House is a lively central location for humanities activity on campus (broadly Art, Art History, Classics, Digital and Computational Humanities, English, History, Literatures, Languages, Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Theater and Performance Studies, and related interdisciplinary programs). It is home to students who share a passion for any dimension of the human experience. With its impressive facilities, Ng is a beautiful space and a wonderful communal resource both for its residents and other Stanford students.

Pre-assignment to Ng House will be considered for students who can demonstrate a love for the arts and humanities, and a desire to engage with each other and the world through humanistic inquiry.

The mission of Ng House is to provide an integrated learning and living environment, promoting a culture of informed inquiry, intellectual curiosity, and spirited participation. We host many events, and facilitate student-initiated and student-led workshops, dinners, and seminars. We organize field trips, welcome organizations from across campus, and work with the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, The Stanford Humanities Center, SLE, ITALIC, and related Stanford departments to bring leading scholars to the residence and to encourage vibrant humanities programming on campus.

Active participation in one student-run and/or house run workshop or activity in autumn quarter, and one additional workshop or activity in either winter or spring quarter. Student workshops are typically special interest groups that meet for approximately 10 hours over a six or seven week period. This could be 90 minutes each week or several hours over a weekend. They are conceived, organized and run by the residents of Ng House, including the leadership team. Students from other dorms are welcome to attend. Fulfilling this requirement carries one unit of credit for students who enroll in English 50.
Participation in house events, such as visiting speaker seminars and local trips.
Commitment to creating a vibrant and engaged community at Ng House.

Gabriella Safran, Professor of Slavic Literatures, Senior Associate Dean of Humanities, H&S
Giovanna Ceserani, Associate Professor of Classics and Director of the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA)
Michele Elam, William Robertson Coe Professor in the Humanities and Faculty Associate Director, Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute
Marisa Galvez, Associate Professor of French and Italian and Faculty Director of Structured Liberal Education (SLE)
Roland Greene, Mark Pigott KBE Professor in the School of Humanities and SciencLeadership Teames, Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities, Professor of English and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center
Natalie Jabbar, Assistant Director of Public Relations, School of Humanities and Science
Karla Oeler, Associate Professor of Art and Art History, Director of Immersion in the Arts: Living in Culture (ITALIC)
Clare Tandy, former resident and former RA at Ng Humanities House, graduate student in Management Science & Engineering
Elaine Treharne, Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities, Professor of English, Director of Stanford Text Technologies, and Resident Fellow at Ng Humanities House (until June 2022)