Program Link: https://publichumanities.ubc.ca/funding/research-clusters/
Sponsor: UBC Public Humanities Hub
Value: Up to $25,000
Description:
Introduction
Cluster Grants support interdisciplinary research cluster development among Humanities scholars in the Faculties of Arts and Education and the Allard School of Law at UBC-V. The grants are intended to promote research activity and collaboration among humanities scholars at UBC and beyond; to help collaborators leverage funding to secure additional support; and to foster more public-facing sharing of research.
Unlike the VPRI Cluster Grant funding program, the Public Humanities Hub grants permit the use of grant funds for the direct costs of research. Therefore, there are at least two types of applicant groups. (a) Applicants have applied for, and been granted, funds for a VPRI Cluster Grant. And the Public Humanities Hub grant requests funds for that group to carry out research. If the group has been funded for a VPRI Cluster, then the budget may not include any costs for events or gatherings. (b) Applicants have not applied for, or have not been awarded a VPRI Cluster Grant. The Public Humanities Hub grant requests funds in support of carrying out research activities and cementing the group by means of collaborative gatherings and/or events.
ELIGIBILITY
The Public Humanities Research Cluster Grant Fund will provide funding to research teams made up of at least five full-time, tenured or tenure-track UBC-V faculty members appointed to a minimum of two different departments, plus graduate students and staff in Arts, Law, and Education to work on Humanities-oriented research projects that include public-facing components. Clusters can apply for up to $15,000.
The project should:
- Be framed and designed through critical, Public Humanities methods and scholarship;
- Identify a significant knowledge advance that represents a contribution of this scholarly work;
- Acknowledge that public scholarship of necessity attends to human rights and other minoritizing histories and processes that characterize public settings;
- Include a Principal Investigator from the UBC-V Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Education, or Allard School of Law;
- Represent research that is clearly designed to address exclusions to access to knowledge; systemic exclusions that restrict the potential publicness of knowledge, reflect the colonial roots of humanities knowledge, and that impact particular publics, including but not limited to, historically, persistently and systemically marginalized groups.
WHO and WHAT?
Cluster Grant applicant groups must fall into one of these two types: (a) Applicants have applied for, and been granted, funds for a VPRI Cluster Grant. The Public Humanities Hub grant requests funds for that group to carry out research. If the group has been funded for a VPRI Cluster, then the PHH grant budget may not include any costs for events or gatherings. The intended PHH Cluster Grant must not have been awarded funding previously. This research activity is in the emergent stages for all cluster members. (b) Applicants have not applied for, or have not been awarded a VPRI Cluster Grant. The Public Humanities Hub grant requests funds in support of carrying out new research activities and cementing the group by means of collaborative gatherings and/or events. The intended PHH Cluster Grant must not have been awarded funding previously. This research activity is in the emergent stages for all cluster members.
CLUSTER GRANT
The grant consists of
- Up to $15,000 of funding
- administrative support from the Hub staff.
The Public Humanities Hub will:
- help publicize the Cluster’s research
- promote events related to clusters’ projects on all its communication channels
- introduce cluster members to relevant community partners
- invite cluster members to contribute to our Public Scholar Training Series, our Massy Reads series and/or other Hub programming, and
- support clusters’ applications for additional research funding. For example, all forms of support outlined above can also be mentioned as monetary/in-kind “matching funds” on SSHRC Connection and other grant applications.
ELIGIBLE EXPENSES
Grantees are highly encouraged to use PHH funds to hire Graduate Research Assistants (GRAs), although all expenses eligible under the Tri-Agency expense guidelines will be permissible except those related to conferences (registration, travel, accommodation, per diem, paper preparation, etc.) and computer equipment purchases.
ACCESS TO FUNDS
A UBC Research Project Information Form (RPIF) and brief budget will be submitted with your application. Funds for grant recipients will be transferred to an ORS research account that will be administered by your home department. Funds will be accessible for two years.
REPORTING REQUIREMENTS
Each Public Humanities Cluster is expected to share some aspect of its research with a non-scholarly audience. In their application, applicants should specify what they envisage as the cluster’s public-facing deliverable. The Adjudication Committee welcomes creative and innovative ways of making research “public.” For example, our first Clusters have proposed curating an exhibit, running a film series, building a podcast and website, and more. For information about previous Clusters, see https://publichumanities.ubc.ca/funding/research-clusters/. Sample applications are available upon request. Typically, though not without exception, research teams should accomplish most of their research goals within two years of receiving funding. Eligible expenses include all SSHRC-eligible expenses, both direct and indirect research costs. Members of each Cluster are expected to meet with the Public Humanities Hub Academic Director at the beginning of the tenure of their award to discuss their plans and how the Hub can assist them.
Applicants who will hold additional cluster support through another award or grant during the tenure of this award must disclose this. Awardees will need to confirm that they will remain at UBC for 12 months beyond the award period.
Successful applicants are expected to attend Public Humanities Hub events throughout the year, to acknowledge Hub funding in any publicity linked to their research project and, at the end of their award, to write a short public-facing reflection on their activities, which will be shared on the Hub website and social media channels and in the Hub’s annual report.
ADJUDICATION
The Adjudication committee, a multi-disciplinary committee of UBC Humanities scholars chaired by the Academic Director of the Public Humanities Hub (Dr. Mary Bryson), will consider the following criteria when evaluating proposals:
- ability of the principal investigator to lead the Cluster
- track records of all Cluster members
- experience and/or potential for carrying out collaborative or interdisciplinary research
- significance of the outlined research project and anticipated outcomes
- feasibility of plan to achieve objectives during tenure of award
- plans to develop a longer-term research agenda and apply for future funding
- timeliness of the award
- justifiability of the budget
- plan for mobilizing knowledge through one or more public-facing form(s) of scholarship
The adjudication committee will aim for diversity and representation among the recipients in terms of career stage, disciplines, gender, etc. Notification of awards will be made by May 2024.
APPLICATION PROCEDURES
Full application procedures are forthcoming. The online application form and related materials will go live in February 2024.
Please complete the online application form, and upload bookmarked PDF files of the current UBC CVs of all Cluster members, as well as a Research Project Information Form for the Principal Investigator, signed by the Principal Investigator and your Department/Unit Head, to https://publichumanities.ubc.ca/funding/research-clusters/ by April 29, 2024.
For queries related to this grant, please contact the Public Humanities Hub manager, Heather Tam, phh.manager@ubc.ca.