Selected Open Funding Opportunities
RDO curates this list of open funding opportunities in the Humanities, Arts, and Interpretive Social Sciences to highlight large, collaborative, and/or strategic funding opportunities that may be of particular interest to the Stanford community. Opportunity descriptions have been compiled from funder announcements, program solicitations, and CFR. This page will be updated regularly to spotlight new opportunities. See RDO's archive (SUNet ID required) for opportunities previously featured on this list.
| Title/Sponsor | Deadline | Description | Amount/ Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| NEH Dangers and Opportunities of Technology (DOT) (20231011-DOI-DOC) | 10/11/23 | This program supports research that examines technology and its relationship to society through the lens of the humanities, with a focus on the dangers and/or opportunities presented by technology, broadly defined. NEH is particularly interested in projects that examine the role of technology in shaping current social and cultural issues. | Individual researchers: $75,000 Collaboratve teams: $150,000 |
| CLIR Digitizing Hidden Collections: Amplifying Unheard Voices | 11/1/23 (initial application) | This grant program, administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) supports the digitization of rare and unique content that deepens public understanding of the histories of people of color and other communities and populations whose work, experiences, and perspectives have been insufficiently recognized or unattended. | $50,000 to $300,000 |
| NARA Public Engagement With Historical Records (89.003) | 11/2/23 | The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks projects that encourage public engagement with historical records. The idea behind this program is to form collaborations among archivists, educators, historians (including documentary editors) and people working in community- based archives to involve the public in discovering and using historical records. The NHPRC is looking for collaborative projects that create models, tools, and technologies that other institutions can freely adopt to serve other communities. | $50,000 to $150,000 (cost-sharing required) |
| Trans-Atlantic Platform (T-AP): Call for Democracy, Governance and Trust (PD 21-188Y) | 11/6/23 (Notice of Intent due 9/15/23) | The Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (T-AP) is a collaboration between humanities and social science research funders from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Humanists will submit full proposals to NEH; social scientists will submit via NSF. The T-AP call on Democracy, Governance and Trust seeks to understand specifically how democracy, governance and trust are integral to the tackling of both short-term crises and long-term challenges and are themselves a focus of the discontent and disruption facing many societies. Teams must include researchers based in at least three participating T-AP countries, with partners from both sides of the Atlantic. | up to $200,000 |
| Russell Sage Foundation Research Grants | 11/7/23 (Letter of Inquiry) | RSF will accept letters of inquiry under all of its core programs and special initiatives: Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context; Future of Work; Immigration and Immigrant Integration; Race, Ethnicity and Immigration; Social, Political, and Economic Inequality. In addition to data analyses, RSF also supports proposals to conduct field experiments, in-depth qualitative interviews, and ethnographies. | up to $200,000 |
| NEH Collaborative Research (20231129-RZ) | 11/29/23 (optional draft due 9/18/23) | This program supports groups of two or more scholars seeking to increase humanistic knowledge through convenings, manuscript preparation for collaborative publications, the creation of scholarly digital projects, or the planning of an international collaboration. Projects must pursue significant research questions and lead to a tangible interpretive product. | up to $250,000, or up to $300,000 for collaborations that include a community college or certain minority-serving institutions |
| NEH Scholarly Editions and Scholarly Translations (20221130-RQ) | 11/29/23 (optional draft due 9/22/23) | This program supports collaborative teams who are editing, annotating, and translating foundational humanities texts that are vital to scholarship but are currently inaccessible or only available in inadequate editions or translations. Typically, the texts are significant literary, philosophical, and historical materials, but works in other humanities fields may also be the subject of an edition. | up to $450,000 |
| ACLS Digital Justice Grants | 12/15/23 | The ACLS Digital Justice Grant program is designed to promote and provide resources for projects at various stages of development that diversify the digital domain, advance justice and equity in digital scholarly practice, and/or contribute to public understanding of racial and social justice issues. This program especially supports projects that engage with the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities. | Seed grants: $10,000 to $25,000 Development grants: $50,000 to $100,000 |
| NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (DHAG) (20240111-HAA) | 1/11/24 (optional draft due 11/13/23) | The DHAG program supports innovative, experimental, and/or computationally challenging digital projects leading to work that can scale to enhance scholarly research, teaching, and public programming in the humanities. | Level I: up to $75,000 Level II: up to $150,000 Level III: up to $350,000 + $100K in matching funds |
| NEH Public Humanities Projects (20230809-BP-BR-GE-GG-GI) | 1/11/24 (optional draft due 11/29/23) | This program supports projects that bring the ideas and insights of the humanities to life for general audiences through in-person exhibitions and historic site interpretations, as well as in-person, hybrid or virtual discussions and other scholar- or staff-led programs. Projects must engage humanities scholarship to analyze significant themes in disciplines such as history, literature, ethics, and art history. | Planning up to $75,000 Implementation up to $400,000 |
Federal (and some non-federal) opportunities are subject to the university's Facilities & Administration (F&A) cost rates. For many foundation funders, the university has approved lower rates, which can be found in the Pre-Approved IDC Exception List.
For some foundations you must request clearance to apply. Be sure to check CFR's Clearance Restricted Foundations list before submitting a letter of inquiry or proposal.
Recurring Funding Opportunities by Topic
- Digital Humanities Research, last update January 2023
- Public Humanities Research, last update January 2023
- Funding Opportunities for Collaborative Research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, last update May 2023
- Recurring Limited Submissions Programs
Other Resources
- Pursuing Extramural Funding - A Primer for Faculty in the Humanities, Arts, and Interpretive Social Sciences: This resource, created by RDO for Stanford faculty in the Humanities, Arts, and Interpretive Social Sciences, provides a general overview of the process of applying for extramural funding as a Principal Investigator (PI) at Stanford.
- Stanford University's Corporate and Foundation Relations (CFR) maintains a more comprehensive list of foundation funding opportunities. The CFR team can also provide insight around funding priorities and application processes for private funders, as well as tailored prospect research.
- DoResearch's Find Funding links to university-supported resources, including Pivot and grants.gov, that allow the user to search funding opportunities in their area(s) of interest.
- The National Research Council (NRC) has identified a list of awards in a range of disciplines that include research/scholarship awards, fellowships, and memberships in honorary societies.
Funding Opportunities in Other Disciplines
- The RDO team also curates a list of funding opportunities for researchers in STEM*, including social scientists who employ quantitative methods.
- The Research Management Group at Stanford's School of Medicine keeps a list of funding opportunities for medical researchers.
Created: 08.31.22
Updated: 09.29.23