FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES TO SUPPORT DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS
This list is intended for your planning purposes. It is our hope that you will be able to use it to determine which agencies might fund your digital project, find more information by visiting their websites, and use what you learn to develop a personal external funding list that will help you stay on task as you prepare your applications.
To navigate, keep this document in layout view, scroll to the table of contents, then click on the page number of the agency or program in which you’re interested. This will take you directly to that entry. If you then wish to learn more, click on the agency’s website address (URL). If clicking doesn’t work, copy the URL, paste it into the address line of your web browser, and type return. Some agencies had not updated their websites at the time this document was compiled, so do check the agency websites and read application instructions carefully.
Although this document focuses largely on fellowships for individual work, it includes a few instances of institutional grants and fellowships. You can submit individual fellowship and grant applications entirely on your own or though the Humanities Grant Development Office (HGDO). Institutional proposals (those requiring submission by a 501(c)3 non profit organization) must be submitted on your behalf by the University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc. (KUCR).
Applicants must make a firm commitment of their time and focus in order to develop competitive grant and fellowship proposals. Because most agencies have deadlines only once each year and take from three to eight months to announce awards, this requires long-term planning. A simple individual fellowship or small grant application can be prepared in four to six weeks. That is not the case for institutional grant proposals. Because of the complexity of such applications, the frequent need to interface with agency program officers, and the necessity for institutional approval and submission it is critical to begin working on them a minimum of four months and preferably six months prior to the agency's deadline in order to compete successfully. If you have collaborators, especially at other institutions, extend your grant proposal development timeline to accommodate the interfaces and required agreements between institutions and among collaborators. Federal agencies typically post guidelines only six to eight weeks before the deadline. In such cases, you can work from the previous year's guidelines and aim for the last known deadline, then tweak materials as may be necessary after the agency posts new instructions. HGDO staff will be glad to talk with you about your research funding strategies and help you create your proposal development timeline, as well as work with you to develop and submit your external applications, whether directly or through KUCR.
As you plan, please keep in mind that the internal deadline to submit all final materials to the HGDO is five (5) working days prior to the agency’s deadline. If requesting a full review and comments, the deadline to submit final drafts is ten (10) working days prior to the agency's deadline. To take full advantage our services, you need to begin working with us on fellowships a minimum of four weeks prior to the agency's deadline. The timeline for institutional grants is much longer, as noted above. KUCR also has an internal deadline of five (5) working days for all final application materials. HGDO can serve as your interface with KUCR, if you begin working with us early enough to allow us to provide this service.
This list is not exhaustive. If you know of other sources, please let us know. If you find nothing here that might help you, go to http://pivot.cos.com and conduct a search specific to your needs. Access to this online database is free to KU scholars (including students) courtesy of KUCR and offers the most comprehensive and dependable compilation of funding opportunities currently available. You can access it from any KU computer or, once you’ve created an account from on campus, from your computer at home.
Humanities Grant Development Office
Kathy Porsch, Research Development Officer: • 785/864-7834
Research Development Specialist: • 785/864-7833
Graduate Research Development Specialist: • 785/864-7887
http://hallcenter.ku.edu/humanities-grant-development-office
Table of Contents
Individual Fellowships in Digital Humanities 1
Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) 1
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Academic Libraries 1
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Data Curation for the Sciences and Social Sciences 1
Postdoctoral Fellowships in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies 1
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities 1
Visiting fellowships 1
University of Florida: Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere 2
Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography 2
National Endowment for the Humanities 2
NEH-Mellon Fellowships for Digital Publication 2
Institutional Grants in Digital Humanities 2
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) 2
ACLS Digital Extension Grants 2
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 3
Program on Digital Information Technology 3
Council on Library and Information Resources 3
Digitizing Hidden Collections and Archives: Enabling New Scholarship Through Increasing Access to Unique Materials 3
EMC Heritage Trust Project 3
Information Heritage Initiative 3
Institute of Museum and Library Services 4
National Leadership Grants for Libraries 4
National Leadership Grants for Museums 4
MacArthur Foundation 4
Digital Media & Learning Grant 4
Andrew W. Mellon Program 4
Scholarly Communications and Information Technology 4
National Archives and Records Administration 5
Access to Historical Records: Archival Projects 5
Access to Historical Records: Major Initiatives 5
Digital Dissemination of Archival Collections 5
Public Engagement with Historical Records 5
Publishing Historical Records in Documentary Editions 6
National Endowment for the Humanities 6
Digital Humanities Advancement grants 6
Digital Projects for the Public 6
Humanities Collections and Reference Resources 7
Humanities Open Book Program 7
Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities 7
Media Projects: Development and Production Grants 8
Scholarly Editions and Translations Grants 8
National Science Foundation 8
Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies 8
Software Development for Cyberinfrastructure (SDIC) 9
1
Individual Fellowships in Digital Humanities
Note: You can submit individual fellowships proposals on your own or though the Hall Center Humanities Grant Development Office (HGDO. HGDO requires submission of all final materials at least five (5) working days before the application deadline. If you would like the HGDO staff to review and comments on your proposal components prior to submission, please submit your final draft documents at least ten (10) working days before the agency deadline.
Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Academic Libraries
CLIR Postdoctoral Fellows work on projects that forge and strengthen connections among library collections, educational technologies, and current research. The program offers recent PhD graduates the chance to help develop research tools, resources, and services while exploring new career opportunities. Host institutions benefit from fellows’ field-specific expertise by gaining insights into their collections’ potential uses and users, scholarly information behaviors, and current teaching and learning practices within particular disciplines.
URL: https://www.clir.org/fellowships/postdoc/info/academic-libraries
Deadline: December 30
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Data Curation for the Sciences and Social Sciences
These two-year fellowships, which will be partially supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, provide recent PhDs with professional development, education, and training opportunities in data curation for the sciences and social sciences. The fellows’ work draws upon their disciplinary expertise in order to help advance data curation practices and services at their host institutions. Salary is $65,000 - $70,000 per annum for a two-year appointment in the Libraries.
URL: https://www.clir.org/fellowships/postdoc/applicants/cmu-data-visualization-and-curation
Deadline: December 30
Postdoctoral Fellowships in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
These two-year fellowships, supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will provide recent PhDs with professional development, education, and training opportunities in data curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The fellows’ work must draw upon their disciplinary expertise in order to help advance data curation practices and services at their host institutions. For this program, Latin American and Caribbean Studies encompass modes of inquiry from numerous fields, including history, sociology, art, archaeology, literature, political science, geography, gender studies, and economics. The fellowships are designed to support international partnerships in the service of cross-disciplinary humanities research and in building greater capacity for digitizing original materials, for sharing related digital data, and for developing humanities computing infrastructure to sustain these resources.
URL: http://www.clir.org/fellowships/postdoc/info/dc-medieval
Deadline: December 30
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
Visiting fellowships
These fellowships for non-University of Virginia faculty offer no stipend. These fellowships can take a variety of forms--a month-long residency in Charlottesville, a year long networked editing project, an international conference to discuss metadata standards, etc. Fellowships are awarded on an ad hoc basis, and, although no funding is provided, advice and guidance is offered to help fellows secure funding.
URL: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/other_fellows.html
Deadline: Rolling
University of Florida: Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography
The aim of this program is to reinvigorate bibliographical studies by providing focused training and mentorship for doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty in the humanities. This is a three-year fellowship tenure, where fellows receive intensive hands-on training at the Rare Book School (University of Virginia) and will work with mentors from the bibliographical community who will guide their archival-based scholarship, and help connect them with professionals in allied fields.
URL: http://www.humanities.ufl.edu/funding/december-both-mellon-criitcal-bibliography.html
Deadline: December 1
National Endowment for the Humanities
NEH-Mellon Fellowships for Digital Publication
This program supports individual scholars pursuing research projects that require digital expression and digital publication. To be eligible for this special opportunity, an applicant’s plans for digital publication must be essential to the project’s research goals. The project must be conceived as digital because the nature of the research and the topics being addressed demand presentation beyond traditional print publication. Successful projects will incorporate visual, audio, and/or other multimedia materials or flexible reading pathways that could not be included in traditionally published books. NEH and Mellon encourage submission of this program from independent scholars and faculty of Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. This fellowship covers periods lasting from six to twelve months at a stipend of $4,200 per month. Recipients may begin awards as early as January 1st and as late as September 1st. This fellowship is awarded to individuals not to institutions.
URL: http://www.neh.gov/grants/research/neh-mellon-fellowships-digital-publication
Deadline: April 11
Institutional Grants in Digital Humanities
Note: All institutional proposals must be submitted through the University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc. (KUCR). HGDO requires submission of all final materials at least five (5) working days before the application deadline. If you would like the HGDO staff to review and provide comments on your proposal components prior to submission to KUCR, please submit your final draft documents at least ten (10) working days before the agency deadline.
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)
The ACLS is one of the major funders for humanities and related social sciences scholarship at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. Grants and fellowships are offered in 11 programs. The two ACLS programs that require institutional approval prior to submission are given below and the following URL provides an overview of all the agency's competitions.
URL: http://www.acls.org/programs/comps/
ACLS Digital Extension Grants
This program supports digitally-based research programs in all disciplines of the humanities and related social sciences. The ACLS intends these grants to help advance the digital transformation of humanities scholarship by extending the reach of digital projects to new communities of users. These grants will support teams of scholars as they enhance existing digital projects in ways that engage new audiences across a range of academic communities and institutions. Projects that document and recognize participant engagement are strongly encouraged. These grants may support projects of 12-18 months in duration. Amount: up to $150,000, which can be used for salary replacement for faculty and staff, software, equipment, travel, or consultant fees. Institutional indirect costs will not be covered. Grants may not support creative works, textbooks, straightforward translations, or purely pedagogical projects.
URL: http://www.acls.org/programs/digitalextension/
Deadline: February 2 (last known)
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Program on Digital Information Technology
This program seeks to better our understanding of the relationship between technology, information, and society, primarily through research on and the development of digital information technology for the conduct of scholarly research and public engagement with knowledge. Grantmaking focuses on:
1) Data and Computational Research--grants related to how information technology enables new forms of data-intensive research. Grants help researchers develop tools, establish norms, and build the institutional and social infrastructure needed to take full advance of developments in data-driven, computation-intensive research.
2) Scholarly Communication--grants related to how information technology may change the dissemination and evaluation of scholarship. These grants aim to ease the transition to digitally mediated forms of scholarship by supporting the development of new models of filtering and curating online scholarly materials and by engaging the emerging community of stakeholders and practitioners tackling similar issues in widely divergent disciplinary contexts.
3) Universal Access to Knowledge--grants related to digitizing knowledge and increasing access to that knowledge. These grants facilitate the openness and accessibility of all knowledge in the digital age for the widest public benefit under reasonable financial terms and conditions.
URL: http://www.sloan.org/major-program-areas/digital-information-technology/
Deadline: Submit a letter of inquiry. The Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant proposals.
Council on Library and Information Resources
Digitizing Hidden Collections and Archives: Enabling New Scholarship Through Increasing Access to Unique Materials
This program funds projects in which locally executed protocols contribute to a national good, using methods that are cost efficient and subject to wider adoption. It supports the creation of digital representations of unique content of high scholarly significance that will be discoverable and usable as elements of a coherent national collection. Awards are from $50,000-$250,000, and $500,000 for collaborative projects. Time period is for 12 months.