Public Humanities Faculty Fellowships Competition

  • Deadline: March 4, 2024   
  • Value: 1 Course release ($11,000); and $1,000 research grant X 2  
  • Eligibility: UBC-V Faculty members (tenured/track) in the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Education, and Allard School of Law 
  • Fellowships awarded to recognize a faculty trajectory of public humanities research excellence and extraordinary knowledge mobilization initiatives 
  • For queries related to this grant, please contact the Public Humanities Hub manager, Heather Tam, phh.manager@ubc.ca. 

 

INTRODUCTION 

The Public Humanities Faculty Fellowships are awarded to recognize and support a faculty trajectory of public humanities research excellence and extraordinary knowledge mobilization initiatives activities among Humanities scholars at UBC-Vancouver (Humanities scholars in the Faculties of Arts and Education and the Allard School of Law).  

   

WHEN AND WHAT? 

The Public Humanities Faculty Fellowships will provide a course-release to two full-time, tenured or tenure-track UBC faculty members (in either research or educational leadership streams) to work on individual Humanities-oriented research projects requiring dedicated release time. These awards will enable successful applicants to do their research within an interdisciplinary community of scholars and, with Hub support, to explore ways to make their research more public-facing and/or to share their research more broadly. 

 

The award consists of  

  1. salary costs associated with hiring a sessional lecturer to teach a three-credit course that the faculty member would normally teach that semester (up to $11,000, paid directly to the faculty member’s department);  
  2. up to $1000 to cover expenses related to any proposed public-facing deliverable (for example, catering, honorarium for visiting speaker, room booking, funding for GAA, open-access costs, film production costs, etc.); and  
  3. administrative support from the Hub staff.  

 

The Hub will also: 

  1. help publicize scholars’ research  
  2. promote events related to scholars’ projects on all its communication channels 
  3. introduce scholars to relevant community partners 
  4. invite scholars to contribute to our Public Scholar Training Series, our Massy Reads series, and/or other Hub programming, and  
  5. support scholars’ applications for additional research funding. For example, all forms of support outlined above can be mentioned as monetary/in-kind “matching funds” on SSHRC Connection and other grant applications. 

 

ELIGIBILITY  

Full-time, tenured or tenure-track UBC-V faculty members appointed to the Faculty of Arts, Education, or Allard School of Law, with a track record of significant engagement in Public Humanities scholarship.  

The faculty member’s research trajectory should: 

  1. Be framed and designed through critical, Public Humanities methods and scholarship;  
  2. Identify a significant knowledge advance that represents a contribution of this scholarly work; 
  3. Acknowledge that public scholarship of necessity attends to human rights and other minoritizing histories and processes that characterize public settings; 
  4. 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.

Members of the Public Humanities Hub Advisory Board are not eligible for the award. 

 

FUNDING REQUIREMENTS 

Course release timing is a matter for the Department Head. 

Course release can be funded up to, and not beyond, $11,000.  

 Applicants who will hold additional teaching releases through another award or grant, or for administrative duties, during the tenure of this award must disclose this and justify why an additional release is necessary. Awardees will need to confirm that they will remain at UBC for 12 months beyond the award period. 

 

REPORTING REQUIREMENTS  

Each Public Humanities Scholar is expected to share some aspect of their research with diverse publics. In their application, applicants should specify what they envisage as their public-facing deliverable. The Adjudication Committee welcomes creative and innovative ways of making research “public.” For example, in the two years that the program has been running, Scholars have curated an exhibit, produced a film, published a trade book, developed a podcast, created an app, and developed an open-educational resource. Some have been part of a collaboration and needed the course release to accomplish their part of a collaborative project. For information about previous Scholars, see https://publichumanities.ubc.ca/funding/public-humanities-faculty-fellowships/. Sample applications are available upon request. 

Successful applicants will become Public Humanities Scholars and will be expected to attend Public Humanities Hub events throughout the year, to acknowledge Hub funding in 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 will be undertaken by a multi-disciplinary committee chaired by the Academic Director of the Public Humanities Hub (Dr. Mary Bryson). The Adjudication committee will consider the following criteria when evaluating proposals: timeliness of the course release for the applicant; plan for meeting research objectives in the time available; significance of the outlined research project and anticipated outcomes; research track record of the applicant; and the feasibility of the plan to mobilize knowledge through public-facing forms of scholarship.  The adjudication committee will aim for diversity and representation among the recipients. Notification of awards will be made in April 2024. 

 

APPLICATION PROCEDURES

Full application procedures are forthcoming. The online application form and related materials will go live in 2024.

Please complete the online application form and upload a PDF of your current UBC CV as a bookmarked PDF, updated to include past and on-going public-facing research activities, at https://publichumanities.ubc.ca/funding/public-humanities-faculty-fellowships/  by March 4, 2024. 

 

For queries related to this grant, please contact the Public Humanities Hub manager, Heather Tam, phh.manager@ubc.ca. 

APPLICATIONS WILL GO LIVE IN 2024