 |
Funding Opportunities in the Social Sciences
You are receiving this newsletter because you are subscribed to our mailing list. All Harvard University faculty and administrators may subscribe
here,
and you may unsubscribe at any time. Please feel free to
to interested colleagues.
|
Unless otherwise noted, all proposals to funders outside of Harvard must be submitted to the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) five business days prior to the sponsor deadline. We can help you navigate the routing process for your proposal.
Questions? Please contact Erin Hale, Senior Research Development Officer at
*
Indicates opportunities new to the newsletter this month
|
For a more comprehensive list of Harvard internal funding opportunities, please see
here
.
|
Non-Federal Opportunities:
Federal Opportunities:
|
|
Internal Funding Opportunities
|
|
Deadline: April 1, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $50,000
Eligible Applicants: Applications are invited from individuals who hold a junior faculty appointment. This includes FAS and SEAS Assistant or Associate Professors, Junior Fellows of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and those in a postdoctoral position at Harvard with a formal accepted offer to join the Junior Faculty at one of Harvard's schools.
The Milton Fund supports research projects in the fields of medicine, geography, history and science that promote the physical and material welfare and prosperity of the human race, investigate and determine the value and importance of any discovery or invention, or assist in the discovery and perfecting of any special means of alleviating or curing human disease. Funds awarded through the Milton Fund support research to explore new ideas, to act as the catalyst between ideas and more definitive directions, and to consider new methods of approaching solutions.
|
|
Deadline: March 29, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $5,000
The Elson Family Arts Initiative fund supports undergraduate education in the arts and humanities and the integration of the arts into the curriculum within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.The Elson fund is intended to introduce art-making activities into parts of the curriculum where art-making has
not traditionally been inserted. Artist instructors, however, may apply for Elson funds to support innovative projects that could not be pursued without additional funding. The Committee will give preference to proposals that incorporate the use of the newly opened Artlab and Annex spaces.
|
Deadline: March 20, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $15,000
Eligible Applicants: Harvard University benefits-eligible faculty, staff, and postdoctoral researchers are eligible to apply for funding, individually or as groups.
The Spark Grants are designed to help "spark" promising teaching and learning projects from idea to reality and position innovations for future success. Funding can be used in various ways; for example, to pay for a research assistant, hire a graduate student with academic technology expertise, or convene collaborative groups. Through Spark Grants, awardees will receive resources, feedback, and community support to help them develop their ideas into prototypes, pilots, and small-scale innovations. Each Spark Grant will be assigned a HILT Grants Coach, who will serve as a strategic thought partner during the funding cycle. HILT will also strive to support any future scaling-up of Spark Grant projects by increasing their visibility and connecting awardees and project outcomes with others in the broader Harvard community. In general, grant proposals should align with HILT's mission to catalyze innovation and excellence in teaching and learning at Harvard University.
|
|
Deadline: March 11, 2019
Award Amount: $5,000 - $100,000 for one year
The Harvard Data Science Initiative is connecting faculty and students across all schools to advance a new science of data. By asking the right questions, driving breakthrough scientific advances, and working with data of a size and variety that was previously unimaginable, we can make startling discoveries, promote better decisions, and effect positive change. The 2019 DSI Competitive Research Fund will support planning grants that coalesce and accelerate methodologically-focused research. For applied work, we are especially interested in projects that intersect with or are likely to have impact within or across the DSI's research themes:
- Data-Driven Scientific Discovery (includes discovery of new materials, drug and gene discovery, environment, astronomy, neuroscience)
- Markets and Networks (includes networks and influence, innovation and crowds, digital economy, jobs, data-driven decisions, blockchain)
- Personalized Health (includes precision medicine, precision public health, medical informatics, diagnostics, personal devices)
- Evidence-Based Policy (includes equality of opportunity, healthcare economics, democracy and governance, climate change -- resilience and mitigation)
Work that is primarily methodological is also strongly encouraged. We are interested in promoting advances across many areas that relate to the science of data, including causal inference, visualization, scalable and robust inference, experimental design, interpretability and robustness, ethics (including privacy and fairness), control of false discovery, human-in-the-loop systems, reinforcement learning, adaptive data systems, deep learning, streaming algorithms, theoretical foundations, reproducibility, and data sharing. Proposed projects should suggest the possibility of longer-term research programs and should describe creative and innovative approaches to advancing research over one to two years. This program is open to individuals who hold a faculty appointment at a Harvard school and who have principal investigator rights at that school.
|
Deadline: March 5, 2019 by 5:00PM
Award Amount: $5,000 - $50,000
Eligible Applicants: FAS and SEAS assistant, associate and tenured faculty; professors in residence and professors of the practice are also eligible.
The Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship is a targeted program that provides funding in the following categories:
- Bridge funding, to allow faculty to continue work on previously funded research, scholarship, or creative activity that does not currently have external funding. Faculty who apply in this category should demonstrate that efforts have been made or will be made to obtain new external funding.
- Seed funding, to encourage faculty to launch exciting new scholarship or research directions that might not yet be ready to compete in traditional funding programs.
- Enabling subventions, to provide small funds to purchase (or upgrade) critical equipment. Applicants for such funds must have no existing startup funds on which they could draw for this purpose.
In addition, the
Inequality in America Initiative is providing an additional increment of bridge and seed funding to support basic research and applied projects aimed at advancing the understanding of the causes and consequences of inequality, testing interventions, and developing and disseminating resources. The Initiative is especially interested in supporting research projects that engage with the
core themes of the initiative and that involve any of the following: interdisciplinary collaboration among departments or Harvard schools; new and early career investigators; training opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students.
|
Deadline: February 28, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $150,000 in direct costs for individual investigators; up to $300,000 in direct costs for collaborative proposals involving funding to multiple independent investigators (project budgets should not include indirect costs). Up to five awards will be made annually.
Eligible Applicants: This competition is open to ladder faculty members in the four participating schools (HMS, HSPH, FAS and SEAS). In HMS, this program is open to ladder faculty (assistant professors, associate professors, and professors) who have primary appointments in the HMS basic and social science departments AND whose laboratories are located on the HMS Quadrangle.In HSPH, eligible PIs include primary Harvard Chan School ladder faculty whose research operation is based at the Harvard Chan School.
The Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research (formerly known as the Star Family Challenge for Promising Scientific Research) provides seed funding to interdisciplinary high-risk, high-impact projects in the life, physical, and social sciences. Early-stage projects that are unlikely to receive funding from traditional grant-making agencies are encouraged. Award recipients will present and discuss their projects with a range of scholars in multiple disciplines at a Challenge event on May 10, 2019, prior to receipt of funding.
|
Deadline: Last day of February, May, August and November
Award Amount: $40,000 for ladder faculty; $5,000 for doctoral students and post-docs
Eligible Applicants: Harvard University full time doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, and ladder faculty.
The FHBI provides seed grants to support transformative research in the social and behavioral sciences. Successful proposals will be those that promise to advance understanding of the social, institutional and biological mechanisms shaping human beliefs and behavior. Funds will be used to support interdisciplinary social science research projects based on innovative experimental or observational designs that make use of sophisticated quantitative methods. The Fund also supports seminars, conferences, and other research-related activities.
|
External Funding Opportunities
|
|
OSP review not required
Sponsor Deadline: June 27, 2019
Award Amount: Scholars are provided with an office at RSF, research assistance, computer and library facilities, and salary support of up to 50 percent of their academic year salary when unavailable from research grants or other sources (up to a maximum of $125,000 for the full term, or $62,500 for half of the full term).
The Russell Sage Foundation's Visiting Scholars Program provides a unique opportunity for select scholars in the social, economic and behavioral sciences to pursue their research and writing while in residence at the Foundation's New York headquarters. Research carried out by Visiting Scholars constitutes an important part of the Foundation's ongoing effort to analyze and understand the complex and shifting nature of social and economic life in the United States. While Visiting Scholars typically work on projects related to the Foundation's current programs, a few scholars whose research falls outside these areas are occasionally invited as well.
The Foundation annually awards about 17 residential fellowships to social scientists who are at least 3 years beyond the Ph.D. Visiting Scholar positions begin September 1st and ordinarily run through June 30th. On rare occasions, scholars visit for only half this period, starting either in September or in February.
|
|
OSP review not required for letter of inquiry
Letter of Inquiry Deadline: May 23, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $175,000
The Russell Sage Foundation is launching a special initiative on Decision Making and Human Behavior in Context that supports innovative research on decision making processes and human behavior in the contexts of work, race, ethnicity, immigration, and social, political and economic inequality in the United States. Applications by scholars in psychology, political science, sociology, and other social science fields who are pursuing questions consistent with the aims of the Foundation are encouraged. This initiative complements RSF's long-standing
Behavioral Economics Program which continues to encourage applications.
|
OSP review not required for letter of inquiry
Letter of Inquiry Deadline: May 23, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $175,000
The Russell Sage Foundation focuses exclusively on supporting social science research in its core program areas as a means of examining social issues and improving policies. The following Russell Sage Foundation programs are accepting letters of inquiry for the May 23, 2019 deadline:
Grants are available for research assistance, data acquisition, data analysis, and investigator time for conducting research and writing up results.
|
OSP review not required for letters of inquiry
Sponsor Letter of Inquiry Deadline: May 1, 2019
Award Amount: $100,000 to $600,000 over 2-3 years for reducing inequality research grants; $100,000 to $1,000,000 over 2-4 years for improving the use of research evidence grants
The W.T. Grant Foundation is focused on youth ages 5 to 25 in the United States, funding research that increases our understanding of:
- programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and
- strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth.
The foundation seeks research that builds stronger theory and empirical evidence in these two areas and informs change. While it is not expected that any one study will create that change, the research should contribute to a body of useful knowledge to improve the lives of young people.
|
|
OSP review not required
Sponsor Deadline: April 22, 2019
Award Amount: $40,000
The Whiting Foundation supports works in progress to enable authors to complete their books. Its chief objective is to foster original, ambitious projects that bring writing to the highest possible standard. This grant is intended to support multiyear book projects requiring large amounts of deep and focused research, thinking, and writing at a crucial point mid-process, after significant work has been accomplished but where an extra infusion of support can make a difference in the ultimate shape and quality of the work. Whiting welcomes submissions for works of history, cultural or political reportage, biography, memoir, the sciences, philosophy, criticism, food or travel writing, and personal essays, among other categories. The work should be intended for a general, not academic, reader. Applicants must be US citizens or residents and must be under contract with a US publisher to be eligible.
|
Harvard OSP Deadline: April 15, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: April 22, 2019
Award Amount: Recent grants have ranged from $20,000 to $1,000,000, with the majority of grants under $100,000
The Searle Freedom Trust fosters research and education on public policy issues that affect individual freedom and economic liberty. Through its grant-making, the foundation seeks to develop solutions to the country's most important and challenging domestic policy issues. The foundation invests primarily in scholarship that results in the publication of books, journal articles, and policy papers. Funding is typically provided in the form of research grants, fellowships, and other types of targeted project support. The Searle Freedom Trust also provides funding for public interest litigation and supports outreach to the public through a variety of forums, including sponsorship of research conferences and seminars, film and journalism projects, and new media initiatives.
|
Sponsor Deadline: April 1, 2019
Award Amount: $5,000 stipend over 2-3 months
The J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship in American History is offered annually by the Library of Congress and the American Historical Association to support significant scholarly research in the collections of the Library of Congress by scholars at an early stage in their careers in history. At the time of application, applicants must hold a PhD or equivalent and must have received this degree within the past seven years. The fellowship will be awarded for at least two, but no more than three months, to spend in full-time residence at the Library of Congress.
|
|
OSP review not required for letters of inquiry
Sponsor Letter of Inquiry Deadline: Rolling
Award Amount: No specified limit
The Working Longer program is examining one of today's most pressing social issues: older workers who need or want to work beyond conventional retirement ages. In this multi-disciplinary program, the Foundation seeks proposals for original projects led by outstanding individuals or teams, which exhibit a high degree of methodological rigor, which have a high expected return to society, and for which funding from the private sector, government, or other foundations is not yet widely available.
|
|
OSP Deadline: March 27, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: April 3, 2019
Award Amount: Applicants from single institutions may request funds in amounts ranging from a minimum of $50,000 to a maximum of $250,000; applicants from multiple institutions collaborating on a single project may request funds in amounts ranging from a minimum of $50,000 to a maximum of $500,000.
Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Enabling New Scholarship through Increasing Access to Unique Materials is a national grant competition administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) for digitizing rare and unique content in collecting institutions.
The Digitizing Hidden Collections program coheres around six core values:
- Scholarship: The program is designed to maximize its impact on the creation and dissemination of new knowledge.
- Comprehensiveness: The program supports digitization projects that will provide thorough coverage of an important topic or topics of high interest to scholars, in ways that help those scholars understand digitized sources' provenance and context.
- Connectedness: The program supports projects that make digitized sources easily discoverable and accessible alongside related materials, including materials held by other collecting institutions as well as those held within the home institution.
- Collaboration: The program promotes strategic partnerships rather than duplication of capacity and effort.
- Sustainability: The program promotes best practices for ensuring the long-term availability and discoverability of digital files created through digitization.
- Openness: The program ensures that digitized content will be made available to the public as easily and completely as possible, given ethical and legal constraints.
|
FAS Expression of Interest Deadline: March 18, 2019
Sponsor Deadline (if nominated): July 2, 2019
Award Amount: $350,000 distributed over five years
Target Applicants: Tenure-track faculty who received their terminal degree in 2012 or later
The W.T. Grant Foundation funds research that increases understanding in one of two focus areas:
- Programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and
- Strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth.
The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand junior researchers' expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. Scholars Program applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. Proposed research plans must address questions of policy and practice that are relevant to the Foundation's focus areas.
FAS is limited to submitting one proposal in consideration of this opportunity. To determine if an internal competition is required, FAS faculty who wish to apply for this opportunity should send a brief expression of interest via email to Erin Hale at [email protected] no later than March 18, 2019.
|
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: March 18, 2019 at 11:30 PM
OSP Deadline for Full Proposal (if nominated): June 7, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: June 14, 2019
Award Amount: $50,000
Eligibility: N
ominees must be full-time faculty as of September 2019; they must be pre-tenure, un-tenured, or have received tenure in the last five years.
Proposals for the Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship should be far enough into development or execution to present specific, compelling evidence that they will successfully engage the intended public. Strong proposals will show evidence of both the overall strategy and the practical plan to implement the proposed project. Relationships with key collaborators should already be deeply developed, and, in some cases, the nominee and collaborators may have tested the idea in a pilot, or the project itself may already be underway. Nominees may propose to direct funds however will best meet the needs of the project. Funding may not be used to cover indirect costs of administering the program.
Harvard is limited to submitting one proposal in consideration of this opportunity. Prospective applicants are asked to submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above by March 18, 2019.
|
|
Harvard Pre-Proposal Deadline: March 18, 2019 at 11:30 PM
OSP Deadline for Full Proposal (if nominated): June 7, 2019
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: June 14, 2019
Award Amount: $10,000
Eligibility: Nominees must be full-time faculty as of September 2019; they must be pre-tenure, untenured, or have received tenure in the last five years.
The Seed Grant supports projects at an earlier stage of development than those eligible for the Fellowship Grant. However, proposals for Seed Grant funding should not be in the very first phase of development.
The work proposed should be at the stage where a compelling vision has been fleshed out, including a clear sense of whose collaboration will be required and the ultimate scope and expected outcomes of the final product.
Project proposers should be able to articulate specific short-term next steps required to advance the proposed project and understand the resources required to complete them.
Harvard is limited to submitting one proposal in consideration of this opportunity. Prospective applicants are asked to submit an internal pre-proposal via the link above by March 18, 2019.
|
OSP review not required
Sponsor Deadline: March 1, 2019
Award Amount: $4,000 plus library privileges and office space for one-month fellowships; $16,000 plus health insurance (if requested), library privileges, and office space for four-month fellowships.
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC), part of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, invites applications for its 2019-2020 Fellowship Program. The Center seeks to promote a better understanding of all aspects of the institution of slavery from the earliest times to the present. The Center especially welcomes proposals that will utilize the special collections of the Yale University Libraries or other research collections of the New England area, and explicitly engage issues of slavery, resistance, abolition, and their legacies. Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to apply.
The GLC offers two types of residential fellowships:
- One-month Fellowships: The Gilder Lehrman Center will award several one-month fellowships between September 2019 and May 2020. The one-month fellowships are designed for scholars who are working on short-term projects including articles, book chapters, or other research endeavors.
- Four-month Fellowships: The Gilder Lehrman Center will award two four-month fellowships, one in the fall semester (from September through December 2019), and one in the spring semester (from either January through April 2020 or February through May 2020). The four-month fellowships are designed for scholars who are working on short-term projects including articles, book chapters, book manuscripts, or other research endeavors. Digital humanities projects are encouraged. The four-month fellowship provides support of $16,000, plus health insurance (if requested), library privileges, and office space.
|
|
OSP review not required
Sponsor Deadline: March 1, 2019
Award Amount: $55,000 plus health insurance benefits (if requested), with the salary paid through Yale University.
The Gilder Lehrman Center invites applications from scholars and public intellectuals for a residential fellowship to study the fundamental origins and circumstances surrounding debt bondage, forced labor, human trafficking, and other forms of modern day slavery. Traditional academics as well as writers and researchers without academic institutional affiliation are encouraged to apply. All Gilder Lehrman Center Fellows will have full access to the Yale University libraries and email. Normally, Fellows can expect shared office space, computer access, and basic office supplies. The Fellows will be expected to be in full-time residence during the academic year beginning August 1, 2019.
|
Federal Funding Opportunities
|
Deadline to submit draft proposal for feedback (optional): April 1, 2019
Harvard OSP Deadline: June 5, 2019
Sponsor Deadline: June 12, 2019
Award Amount: Up to $200,000. The Commission provides no more than 50 percent of total direct project costs so cost sharing is required.
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks proposals to publish documentary editions of historical records. The goal of this program is to provide access to, and editorial context for, the historical documents and records that tell the American story. Projects may focus on the papers of major figures from American history or cover broad historical movements in politics, social reform, business, military, the arts, and other aspects of the national experience. The historical value of the records and their expected usefulness to broad audiences must justify the costs of the project. Applicants should demonstrate familiarity with the best practices recommended by the
Association for Documentary Editing or the
Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions.
All new projects (those which have never received NHPRC funding) must have definitive plans for publishing and preserving a digital edition which provides online access to a searchable collection of documents. New projects may also prepare print editions (including ebooks and searchable PDFs posted online) as part of their overall publishing plan, but the contents of those volumes must be published in a fully-searchable digital edition within a reasonable period of time following print publication.
|
|
OSP review not required
Sponsor Deadline: April 24, 2019
Award Amount: $5,000 per month for 6-12 months for projects beginning February 2020 or later
The Fellowships for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan program is a joint activity of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Awards support research on modern Japanese society and political economy, Japan's international relations, and U.S.-Japan relations. The program encourages innovative research that puts these subjects in wider regional and global contexts and is comparative and contemporary in nature. Research should contribute to scholarly knowledge or to the general public's understanding of issues of concern to Japan and the United States. Appropriate disciplines for the research include anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, linguistics, political science, psychology, public administration, and sociology. Awards usually result in articles, monographs, books, digital materials, archaeological site reports, translations, editions, or other scholarly resources.
|
|
FAS/SEAS Statement of Intent Deadline: March 11, 2019 by 5:00PM
Sponsor Deadline: May 31, 2019
Award Amount: $50,000-$2,000,000
Target Applicants: Groups of three or more PIs on active, distinct NIH research awards
The S10 programs include the
Shared Instrumentation Grant Program (for direct costs $50,000-$600,000), the
High End Instrumentation Grant Program (for direct costs $600,001-$2,000,000), and the
Shared Instrumentation for Animal Research Grant Program (SIFAR) (for direct costs $50,000-$750,000 for instrumentation to support research using animals or related materials). The objective of the NIH S10 Instrumentation Grant Programs is to make available to institutions expensive research instruments that can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational or clinical areas of biomedical/behavioral research. The program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system.
While there is no restriction on the number of applications an institution can submit for these opportunities, there are restrictions to applications submitted for similar equipment from the same institution. In order to determine if there are any overlapping requests within Harvard, potential applicants from FAS and SEAS are asked to submit a brief statement of intent to Erin Hale at
[email protected] no later than March 11, 2019.
The statement of intent should include the following:
- PI Name
- Instrumentation Program (Shared Instrumentation, High End Instrumentation, or SIFAR)
- Brief description of the proposed instrument (one brief paragraph)
- Major User group (three or more investigators who are Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) on three distinct active NIH research grants)
- Proposed location of the instrument, if funded
|
Other Federal Funding Opportunities:
Agency for International Development (USAID)
Department of State
National Institute of Justice
- Graduate Research Fellowship in the Social and Behavioral Sciences - April 8, 2019*
- Research and Development in Forensic Science for Criminal Justice Purposes- April 11, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation on Violence Against Women: Sexual Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, Stalking, and Teen Dating Violence - April 15, 2019*
- Graduate Research Fellowship in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics - April 17, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation on the Administration of Justice - April 19, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation on Domestic Terrorism Prevention - April 22, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation for the Testing and Interpretation of Physical Evidence in Publicly Funded Forensic Laboratories - April 29, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation on Gangs and Gang Violence - April 29, 2019*
- Evaluation of Project Safe Neighborhoods - May 1, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation on White-Collar Crime: Health Care and Elder Fraud - May 2, 2019*
- NIJ Research and Evaluation on Drugs and Crime - May 6, 2019*
- Postconviction Testing of DNA Evidence - May 6, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation on Policing - May 7, 2019*
- Research and Evaluation on Promising Reentry Initiatives - May 13, 2019*
- Artificial Intelligence Research and Development to Support Community Supervision - May 13, 2019*
National Institutes of Health
National Endowment for the Humanities
Sign up for agency-specific funding alerts:
|
For assistance, please contact:
Erin Hale
Senior Research Development Officer
To see previous Social Science Funding Newsletters, please visit our
email archive.
|
|
|
Research Development | RAS | research.fas.harvard.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
