Interdisciplinary Humanities Faculty Community-Engaged Research Grant
Summer 2024
Application Deadline: October 16, 2023
With expanded funding from the Henry Luce Foundation (2023-2025) and UC Merced's Graduate Division, we will continue to strengthen the training of Interdisciplinary Humanities graduate students through the integration of community-engaged research. Our initiative aims to support thematic and comprehensive community-engaged research opportunities and broaden training to facilitate humanities research collaborations between new and advanced graduate students and community stakeholders.
Through this research grant initiative, we aim to prepare our humanities graduate students for career paths in non-profit sectors and industry as well as academia, with professional skill sets in teamwork and collaboration, curatorial and ethnographic methods, and translational research activities such as public presentations, museum exhibits, and performances, to name a few possibilities.
In Academic Year 2023-2024 two faculty-led community-engaged research projects will receive $5000 each. This can be considered as seed support to foster long-term projects or for a single summer’s demonstration project. Applications can involve one or multiple IH faculty, with one point of contact. The project can be new or an ongoing community-engaged research project. We are particularly interested in projects related to the thematic areas of creative placemaking, environmental justice, migration, and social memory.
Beyond simply outreach to community stakeholders, the proposed community engagement project should be a collaboration with a two-way exchange of information, ideas, and expertise as well as shared decision making. The following list of characteristics of community-engaged scholarship is adapted from Recognizing Faculty Work, by Robert Diamond and Bronwyn Adam (1993):
The activity requires a high level of disciplinary expertise.
The activity breaks new ground or is innovative.
The activity can be replicated and elaborated.
The work and its results can be documented.
The work and its results can be peer-reviewed.
The activity has significance or impact.
A successful proposal, then, would have a statement of purpose, a design with humanities research methodologies, and intended broader impacts – reflecting a full exchange with a community partner as part of a team and expertise.
In addition, up to eight Interdisciplinary Humanities graduate students will be awarded $7,000 summer fellowships for their participation in one of the two funded faculty-led research projects. On October 24, once the faculty-led research projects are announced, graduate students can reach out to faculty about their research interests related to the overall project.
Application Requirements:
Have a community collaborator(s), describe their meaningful role(s), and demonstrate their agreement with the proposed project.
Describe opportunities for graduate students to utilize Interdisciplinary Humanities research methods.
Have an initial plan for disseminating research results to academic and community audiences.
IH graduate students (and also faculty and community collaborators) are encouraged to participate in the monthly workshops being offered in AY 2023-24 to build knowledge and skills for community-engaged research. Students will enroll in a Spring 2024 group study course with you to receive one-unit of credit. This is an opportunity to build the team, get familiar with scholarly literature about community-engaged scholarship, and plan the summer research. There will also be one planning workshop in spring with the members of the two teams.
Faculty, fellows, and community collaborators awarded the grant will participate in the UCM Summer Institute for Community-Engaged Scholarship to strengthen networking and baseline transferable skills (May 20-21, 2024, details to follow).
Discuss a digital archive/presence for the project as relevant (and this can be coordinated with Emily Lin, UCM Library).
Plan to present the research at an annual campus symposium such as the annual Community Engaged Research event as part of the UCM Research Week (typically held during the first week of March).
Faculty leads agree to participate in the upcoming summer institute if funded. They are encouraged to coordinate the required participation of graduate students and community collaborators.
Apply online through the webform below.
DEADLINE: October 16, 2023
