[URBANTH-L]FUNDING: SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship

Angela Jancius jancius at ohio.edu
Mon May 12 15:09:57 EDT 2008


Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF)

Request for Proposals - Faculty Opportunities

The Social Science Research Council, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, is pleased to announce a call to faculty for interdisciplinary
research field proposals for the 2009 Dissertation Proposal Development
Fellowship (DPDF) program.

Established in 2006, the DPDF combines financial support and workshop
experience for early-stage graduate students engaged in predissertation
research and developing their dissertation proposals. The DPDF program is
designed to intervene at a critical moment in the career development of
graduate students in the humanities and social sciences by aiding their
transition from students to researchers. It provides complementary
interdisciplinary perspectives to students across the disciplines of the
social sciences and humanities.

Faculty applicants must be tenured at different doctoral degree-granting
programs at US universities and apply in teams of two. DPDF Research
Directors lead groups of 12 graduate student fellows in two four-day
workshops Research directors receive a stipend of $10,000 each. More
information about the program may be found at: http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf

Research Fields

A research field refers to subdisciplinary and interdisciplinary domains
with common intellectual questions and styles of research. Research fields
can be topical in focus, transnational in scope, or comparative. They can be
organized around sources, or grounded in geographical regions.  The
Council is especially interested in innovative fields of study that may not
yet be adequately supported in academic departments. The 2008 research
fields were: Animal Studies, Human Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change, Muslim Modernities, Science and Technology Policy, Urban Visual
Studies. For 2009, the Council especially seeks fields touching on
environmental issues, religion, and visual culture. Full descriptions of the
2007 and 2008 research fields are available on the program Web Site:
http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf

Research Directors

The DPDF Faculty Committee will select five research fields, each proposed
by two faculty research directors with different institutional affiliations
and, as relevant, different disciplinary specializations. With the
assistance of SSRC program staff, research directors run the spring and fall
workshops that bracket the predissertation research of the students.
Research directors should be tenured, experienced supervisors of
dissertation research. Each faculty member will receive a stipend of
$10,000; students will receive up to $5,000 for summer predissertation
research.

Application Requirements and Deadline

The DPDF program invites faculty to submit joint proposals for research
fields for the 2009 fellowship program. The application is available through
the SSRC's application portal, http://applications.ssrc.org/. Proposals
should describe the relevance of the research field, the kind of graduate
students who might be recruited, and the kinds of activities that would be
entailed in each of the two workshops, along with a short bibliography and
curricula vitae of the two research directors. Applications must be
submitted via the application portal by October 3rd, 2008.

Contact Details

Please direct any questions to program staff at dpdf at ssrc.org

Emily Burns
Social Science Research Council


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