The Kansas Studies Institute at JCCC promotes research and teaching on the culture, history, economics and natural environment of Kansas.
Kansas Studies Institute, founded in 2009, fulfills its mission by collaborating with individuals and entities both at JCCC and throughout Kansas to expand our understanding of the state’s peoples, places, and landscape. Tai Edwards is the director.
Follow us on Instagram: @kansasstudiesinstituteTrespassers Beware: Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors
KSI is one of numerous collaborators on this commemorative public art project, led by Monumenta and the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, along with the Omakyehstih Collective. This project illuminates the story of the Wyandot Conley sisters – Lyda, Helena, and Ida – who defended their family and ancestor’s burials in the Huron Indian Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas. While Lyda pursued legal resistance – making her the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court – she and her sisters also defended the cemetery round-the-clock in a shack they built in the cemetery – named Fort Conley. This exhibit is coming to JCCC in Spring 2026.
Visit Monumenta's website to learn more
Kansas Land Treaties Project
Chapman Center for Rural Studies, KSI, Kaw Nation citizens, and Kansas State University scholars collaborate on this public resource that helps educators, students, and the public learn more about this state’s namesake: the Kanza people (today’s federally recognized Kaw Nation). The project provides annotations for treaties and acts of Congress impacting the Kanza, along with oral histories, interactive maps, and numerous short films about Kanza history and life. This project has received funding from Humanities Kansas and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Other recent projects include:
- Kansas Cosmos: a student-created, to-scale version of the solar system that maps over the state of Kansas.
- Sacred Red Rock Project: a collaborative project that worked to rematriate a sacred boulder to Kaw Nation. The boulder had been used for almost a century as a pioneer monument in Lawrence, Kansas.
- Collaboration on preservation of the Quindaro Townsite Ruins in Kansas City, Kansas. Learn more in Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains (2019).
- Tai Edwards shared a Big Idea on the Humanities Kansas website: How Should We Honor Someone's Military Service?
- Recording oral histories. This began with Vietnam-era veterans in “Kansas Stories of the Vietnam War” – a Humanities Kansas project. KSI has continued this work, recording oral histories with veterans of any era.
- Production assistance for Kansas-themed documentaries.
- Collaborating to provide programming on a variety of Kansas topics, such as depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, artistic representations of Kansas, and stories from specific communities, such as Special Olympics Kansas, African Americans in Salina, and Indigenous nations.
- Commissioning and maintenance, including prairie burning, of Stan Herd’s “earthworks” installation titled Kansa, on the southwestern side of the JCCC campus.
- Traveling with students and teaching coursework on the state.
- Student internships involving a range of opportunities, including researching and designing installations in celebration of JCCC’s 50th anniversary; publishing peer-reviewed scholarship; and assisting in the Johnson County Trails Project that posts historic signage around the county’s hiking trails.
- Annual programming on Kansas Day, Jan. 29 – the date Kansas became a state.
Much of this great work can be accessed through the Kansas Studies Institute digital archive, available through JCCC’s Billington Library and on the Kansas Studies Institute playlist on JCCC's YouTube channel.