|
Questions?
Contact NEH's Division of Research Programs at 202-606-8200 or e-mail collaborative@neh.gov. Hearing-impaired applicants can contact NEH via TDD at 1-866-372-2930.
Type of Award
Successful applicants will be awarded a grant of outright funds, federal matching funds, or a combination of the two, depending on the request of the applicant and the availability of NEH funds.
How to obtain a print-version of this application
Call 202-606-8446, send an e-mail to info@neh.gov, or write to NEH, Office of Public Affairs, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20506
Collaborative Research Grants support: original research undertaken by a team of two or more scholars; or research coordinated by an individual scholar that, because of its scope or complexity, requires additional staff and resources beyond the individual's salary.
Eligible projects include:
- research that significantly adds to knowledge and understanding in the humanities;
- conferences on topics of major importance in the humanities that will benefit ongoing research;
- archaeology projects that interpret and communicate the results of archaeological fieldwork. Projects may encompass excavation, materials analysis, laboratory work, field reports, and preparation of interpretive monographs;
- translations into English of works that provide insight into the history, literature, philosophy, and artistic achievements of other cultures; and
- research that uses the knowledge, methods, and perspectives of the humanities to enhance understanding of science, technology, and medicine.
These grants support full-time or part-time activities for periods of one to three years. Support is available for various combinations of scholars, consultants, and research assistants; project-related travel; field work; applications of information technology; and technical support and services. All grantees are expected to communicate the results of their work to the appropriate scholarly and public audiences.
Previously Funded Projects
Individuals or institutions whose projects have received NEH support may apply for a grant for a new or subsequent state of that project. These proposals receive no special consideration and will be judged by the same criteria as others in the grant competition. However, the proposals must be substantially updated, including a description of the new activities and a justification of the new budget. The applicant must also describe how the previously-funded project met its goals.
Collaborative Research Grants cannot be used for:
- specific policy studies or educational or technical impact assessments;
- support for the preparation or publication of textbooks;
- archaeological materials analysis whose primary goal is refinement of a method;
- inventories of collections;
- research in educational methods, tests, or measurements; or
- recurrent meetings of professional organizations, societies, and scholarly organizations.
Note: Projects for documentary editing should be submitted to Scholarly Editions Grants. Projects for preparing bibliographies, descriptive catalogs, dictionaries, encyclopedias, databases, or other research tools or reference works should be submitted to Reference Materials Grants.
Awards are made for one to three years and normally range from $25,000 to $100,000 per year. The use of federal matching funds is encouraged. Federal matching funds are released on a 1:1 basis when a grantee secures gift funds from eligible third parties.
Cost Sharing
Normally NEH support will not exceed 80 percent of total project costs. The balance of the costs is to be borne by the applicant's institution or other non-federal sources. Previously funded projects should expect a progressively larger share of the costs to be assumed by the host institution or third parties.
Eligible applicants:
- nonprofit, IRS tax-exempt institutions and organizations in the United States;
- state and local governmental agencies; and
- U.S. citizens or foreign nationals who have been living in the United States or its jurisdictions for at least the three years prior to the time of application. Applicants affiliated with an eligible institution must apply through their institution.
Project directors cannot be degree candidates.
NEH generally does not award grants to other federal entities or to applicants whose projects are so closely intertwined with a federal entity that the project takes on characteristics of the federal entity's own authorized activities. This does not preclude applicants from using grant funds from, or sites and materials controlled by, other federal entities in their projects, as long as these resources are not used as gifts to release NEH matching funds.
Preparing an Application
Up to six weeks before the deadline, applicants may submit a draft of the narrative and budget sections of their proposal. The preliminary proposal gives an applicant the opportunity to receive staff comments about the substance and format of the application. These comments are not part of the formal review process, but previous applicants have found them helpful. Once NEH has received a formal application, its staff will not comment on its status except with respect to questions of completeness or eligibility.
A complete application includes the following:
- Application cover sheet.
Complete the cover sheet and attach a copy to the application.
Project titles should be brief, descriptive, and substantive.
All institutions applying to federal grant programs are required to provide a DUNS number, which is issued by Dun & Bradstreet, as part of their application. Project directors should contact their institution’s grant administrator or chief financial officer to obtain their institution’s DUNS number. Federal grant applicants can obtain a DUNS number free of charge by calling 1-866-705-5711. More information about the new requirement is available.
- Statement of significance and impact
Provide a one-page abstract written for a nonspecialist audience stating clearly the importance of the proposed work and its relation to larger issues in the humanities.
- Table of contents
List all parts of the application and corresponding page numbers.
- List of participants
On a separate page, list in alphabetical order, surnames first, all project participants and collaborators and their institutional affiliations, if any. This list will be used to ensure that prospective panelists and reviewers have no conflict of interest with the project that they will be evaluating. This list should include advisory board members, if any.
- Narrative description
Applicants should provide an intellectual justification for the project and a work plan. Narrative descriptions are limited to twenty-five double-spaced pages. All pages should have one-inch margins and the font size should be no smaller than eleven point. Use appendices to provide supplementary material. Applicants should keep in mind the criteria (listed below) used to evaluate proposals. Provide a detailed project description consisting of the following sections:
- Substance and context
Provide a clear and concise explanation of the project and its value to scholars, students, and general audiences in the humanities. Describe the scope of the research, source materials, the relationship of the research to other published and ongoing work in the field, and major issues to be addressed. Include a bibliographical essay in the narrative section or a bibliography of relevant primary and secondary sources in an appendix.
- History and duration of the project
Provide a concise history of the project, including information about preliminary research or planning, previous financial support, publications produced, and resources or research facilities available. List any volumes, microform products, or electronic products produced with dates of publication; where applicable, the list should indicate the publisher, print or production runs, sales, and royalties. Provide reviews of the most recent volume or other product in an appendix. If an archaeological excavation is proposed, list publications of previous field reports and interpretive studies of the site. If the project has a website, provide its address. If work on the project will continue after the period of the grant, the applicant should provide details about that work and probable sources of support.
- Staff
Identify the project director and collaborators, describing their responsibilities and qualifications. Provide résumés for the principal collaborators (maximum of two pages each) in an appendix. Project directors must devote a significant portion of their time to their projects. All persons directly involved in the conduct of the proposed project--whether or not their salaries are paid from grant funds--should be listed, their anticipated commitments of time should be indicated, and the reasons for and nature of their collaboration explained. If the project has an advisory board, provide a statement of its function and a list of board members.
- Methods
Explain the project's methods.
- Explain how central research questions will be approached and how any potential difficulties in working with primary source materials will be resolved.
- Describe in detail the tasks to be undertaken and the computer technology to be employed, indicating what technical and staff resources will be required, as well as the staff's experience with the technology and its application to humanities scholarship.
- Applicants proposing field work should discuss the appropriateness of the methodology, including a clear, explicit discussion of the links between the project's interpretive questions, the data, and the methods of collection and analysis;
- Applicants preparing a translation should demonstrate the significance of the text to be translated and explain the criteria for selecting the text that will serve as the basis for the translation. Explain how errors and variant readings in existing editions will be dealt with, and how particular problems posed by the translation (including the degree of difficulty of the text) will be resolved. Describe the total number of existing documents and texts, the percentage of documents or pages to be translated, how that percentage was determined, and the selection criteria applied. If working with a large number of documents, describe the procedures for controlling them. If transcribing materials, describe the principles to be followed. Translations should include critical introductions and explanatory annotations to establish historical and intellectual contexts of the work or works. Describe how the introduction and annotations will contribute to a better understanding of the text;
- Applicants proposing a conference should identify the issues to be addressed and explain their importance. Identify the presenters and commentators and describe how they were selected. Describe in detail the qualifications of each person listed on the program. Provide letters of commitment from conference participants in an appendix. Describe the conference's daily program and show how it will foster productive discussion. Provide information about facilities to be used for holding the conference and housing the participants. Applicants must demonstrate that a conference is the appropriate method for realizing the research objectives and that the objectives cannot be achieved through regular meetings of professional organizations and formal or informal gatherings of scholars.
- Final Product and Dissemination
Describe publication plans and provide, if possible, an outline of the publication. Include in an appendix any pertinent correspondence with a publisher, such as a letter of interest. Applicants should discuss the form chosen for the final product (printed articles or books, microform, electronic media, or some combination) and the rationale for the choice. If the project involves materials under copyright, the applicant should indicate what has been done to secure the necessary permission to publish.
- Work Plan
Describe what will be accomplished during each six-month period and identify the staff members involved. The work described in the proposal should be completed by the end of the grant period.
- Substance and context
- Project budget
Using the instructions, complete the budget form (10-page PDF).
- Appendices
Use appendices to provide essential supplementary materials. All appendices should not total more than thirty-five pages. Include a brief résumé (two-page maximum) for each principal project participant and letters of commitment from other participants and cooperating institutions. Assessments of previous applications and testimonials (as opposed to letters of commitment from conference participants or letters of interest from prospective publishers) should not be included. Descriptive material from preliminary work or previous periods of support may be included in an appendix, but should be limited to essential information. If bibliographical references are not in the narrative, include a bibliography of the relevant primary and secondary literature in an appendix.
- For archaeological excavations, include appropriate plans, maps, and photographs, as well as evidence that all necessary permits will be forthcoming.
- For translations, provide a five- to seven-page, double-spaced sample of the translation to be undertaken with appropriate sample annotations and a photocopy of the same passage in the original language. Choose passages that show the importance and the degree of difficulty of the text.
- For conferences, provide a copy of the proposed program, letters of commitment from presenters and cooperating institutions, résumés (two-page maximum) for the conference organizers, and a paragraph devoted to each presenter's qualifications.
- Statement of history of grants
If the project has received previous support from any federal or nonfederal sources, including NEH, please list the sources, dates, and amounts of these funds. These materials should explain how many years of NEH support the project has already received. If the project has a long history of support, the sources and contributions may be grouped and summarized.
- List of suggested evaluators
On a separate sheet of paper, provide the names, full mailing addresses, and e-mail addresses of six to eight persons who can provide impartial evaluations of the proposal. Explain briefly each person's qualifications as an evaluator. Do not, however, discuss the proposal with the potential evaluators. Previous applicants should revise the list of suggested evaluators to include several persons not named in the earlier application(s). The evaluators should be experts either in the project's subject area or proposed methodology, or they should be scholars whose expertise and broad knowledge lend weight to their judgments. Do not list potential evaluators who would be excluded from consideration because of federal rules governing conflict of interest. These exclusions apply to immediate relatives of project staff members, all employees of the applicant institution, and all others who stand to benefit financially from the project if it is funded. Applicants' dissertation advisers and individuals who have been or will be involved in the project should also be excluded.
Deadline for Submission
Applications must be received by November 1, 2004, for projects beginning no earlier than July 2005.
Application Checklist
Include the original (unbound, one-sided) and 10 collated copies in this order:
- signed application cover sheet
- statement of significance and impact
- table of contents
- list of project participants
- narrative
- budget forms
- appendices
- history of grants
- 2 copies of the list of suggested evaluators
- 3 copies of the signed application cover sheet
- 1 extra copy of the list of project participants
Send applications to:
Collaborative Research
Division of Research Programs
Room 318
National Endowment for the Humanities
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20506
202-606-8200
NEH continues to experience lengthy delays in the delivery of mail by the U. S. Postal Service. To ensure that your application arrives by the receipt deadline, please consider using a commercial delivery service. NEH will acknowledge the receipt of your application by e-mail. Although formal applications cannot be accepted by e-mail or fax, we do recommend the use of such alternatives for other kinds of correspondence, including inquiries, preliminary drafts, recommendations, or reports.
Evaluators are asked to apply the following five criteria.
- Intellectual significance of the project, including its potential contribution to scholarship in the humanities; the likelihood that it will stimulate new research; its relationship to larger themes in the humanities; and the significance of the material on which the project is based.
- Pertinence of the research questions being posed, the appropriateness of research methods, translation approaches, or conference design; the appropriateness of the technology employed in the project; the feasibility of the work plan; in the case of translation projects, the quality of samples, e.g., their content, accuracy, readability, and the clarity and helpfulness of annotations; and the appropriateness of the field work to be undertaken, the archival or source materials to be studied, and the research site.
- Qualifications, expertise, and levels of commitment of the project director and key project staff or contributors.
- Promise of quality, usefulness, and impact on scholarship of any resulting publication, product, or outcome; soundness of the dissemination plans, including benefit to the audience identified in the proposal and the strength of the case for employing print, microform, digital format, or a combination of media; and in the case of archaeology projects, the likelihood that the project will produce an interpretive study.
- Potential for success, including the likelihood that the work proposed will be completed within the projected time frame; where appropriate, the project's previous record of success; and the reasonableness of the proposed budget in relation to anticipated results.
Review and Selection Process
Knowledgeable persons outside NEH will read each application and advise the agency about its merits. The Endowment’s staff comments on matters of fact or on significant issues that otherwise would be missing from these reviews, then makes recommendations to the National Council on the Humanities. The National Council meets at various times during the year to advise the NEH Chairman on grants. The Chairman takes into account the advice provided by the review process and, by law, makes all funding decisions.
Award notices
Applicants will be notified by letter in June 2005.
Administrative requirements
Before submitting an application, applicants should review their responsibilities as a grantee, the Davis-Bacon Act, and certification requirements.