Digital Humanities Grants

The College of the Liberal Arts has created the Digital Humanities Grants program to provide seed funding for digital research projects in the humanities that are likely to produce excellent scholarship and raise the profile of humanities research at Penn State, or to support training in digital, computational, or statistical research methods.

Awards of up to $10,000 per year may be granted for each accepted proposal, with multi-year projects funded for no more than 3 years. We encourage projects funded by these grants to use the scholarship they generate to pursue external funding.

Eligibility

Tenured and tenure-track faculty in the Liberal Arts are eligible to apply for Digital Humanities Grants. We welcome applications from interdisciplinary teams that include members from other colleges and units internal to Penn State, but the Principal Investigator must be in Liberal Arts.

Use of Funds

Grant funds may be used to support:

• Collaboration with leading innovators and researchers in the field.
• Travel to support research activity and/or to meet with potential external funding sources.
• Training in new research methods, including computer-oriented or statistical methods, including workshops or short courses, online or in-person.
• Technologies or equipment required by the project that are not normally provided by the departments and colleges. (Do not request funds for laptop computers for research assistants, computers for data storage, etc.)
• Wages for project employees.
• Graduate assistant stipends.

Due to ongoing uncertainty around the pandemic, we do not know if funds will be able to be used to support travel.

Funding Priorities

Priority will be given to proposals that demonstrate:

• Considerable promise for enhancing humanities scholarship through the use of digital technologies.
• The potential to generate proposals for external funding.
• Collaborative efforts among faculty and staff from different departments, units, and colleges at Penn State.
• Collaborations with other institutions.

Proposal Submission Guidelines

Proposals should have the following components:

1. Project Summary (1 page):
   
   1. Designated Principal Investigator (primary point of contact)
   2. Title of project
   3. Abstract (200 words)
   4. Names, Titles, Colleges, and Campuses of Team Members
   5. Amount requested
   6. Brief Project Timeline
2. Project Narrative (1-2 pages):
   
   1. Explanation of the scholarly significance of the work.
   2. Brief description of any pertinent research already conducted.
   3. A description of the project’s structure and goals (what do you want to do? what will you accomplish?)
   4. Timeline for the study.
   5. Team proposals should include proposed roles for each team member.
   6. Proposed outcomes, including funding opportunities to be pursued and potential publication/presentation venues.
3. Itemized Budget Request (1 page)
   
   1. What will you spend? What will you spend it on?
   2. Separate spending into phases/years where appropriate

Submission Process

• Proposals are due no later than 5:00 p.m. on March 31, 2022
• Please submit proposals (as PDF files) to infocenter@psu.edu.
• Funding decisions will be announced within four weeks of the proposal submission deadline.

Expectations of Grant Recipients

PIs of funded proposals will be expected to:

• Within 6 months of the grant project’s completion, submit a brief (1-2 pages) summary of the achieved project outcomes. This summary should include any publications or presentations that resulted from the grant-funded work.
• Publish and/or present results in appropriate scholarly venues.
• Adhere to Penn State research and intellectual property policies.
• Apply for external funding, where appropriate.