Public Humanities Faculty Fellowships Award

Public Humanities Hub (PHH) Faculty Fellowships Award are awarded to recognize a faculty trajectory of public humanities research excellence, a specific public humanities research project to be carried out during the funded period, and excellence in publication and knowledge mobilization initiatives. PHH Fellowships include course release and research funds.

  • Deadline: March 14, 2025 (Friday)
  • Value: Fellowships (1 Course release ($11,000); and $5,000 research grant); up to 3 will be awarded
  • Eligibility: UBC-V Faculty members (tenured/track), in either research or educational leadership streams, appointed to the Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Education, and Allard School of Law 
  • For queries related to this grant, please contact the Public Humanities Hub manager, Heather Tam, phh.manager@ubc.ca. 

APPLICATION PROCEDURES

Terms of Reference

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.  

 

FELLOWSHIPS AWARD & GRANT:  

The Public Humanities Faculty Fellowships will provide a course-release to up to three full-time, tenured or tenure-track UBC faculty members 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 $5000 to cover the direct costs of the proposed Fellowship research; 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. 

 

ADJUDICATION CRITERIA

The application will be assessed by an adjudication team made up of public humanities faculty members who are members of the Public Humanities Hub Advisory Board. The application will be assessed in terms of the following criteria:

  1. Humanities? Framed and designed through Public Humanities methods and scholarship. Applicant’s academic trajectory provides evidence of sustained academic contributions to the public humanities;
  2. Public Humanities? Applicant prioritizes: (a) public-facing engagement; and/or, (b) academic engagement that seeks to transform and redistribute access to knowledge amongst diverse publics;
  3. Knowledge Advance. Identifies a significant knowledge advance that represents the major academic contribution of this scholarly work;
  4. Capability. Applicant’s expertise and capacity to succeed in relation to the project’s stated aims;
  5. Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization (EDID). Represents research with a clearly articulated aim to achieve inclusive excellence through public humanities scholarship. EDID expertise of the applicant.

Notification of awards will be made in April 2025.

 

FUNDING REQUIREMENTS

Course release timing is a matter for the Department Head. 

The Public Humanities Hub is a partnership between the Faculties of Education, Law and Arts. Course Releases will be funded at the Sessional Course Release Rate that is INTERNAL for any of the three given faculties, and not beyond $11,000.

Applicants who will hold additional teaching releases for administrative duties during the tenure of this award must disclose this and justify why an additional release is necessary. If you have been awarded a Faculty of Arts Research Award, Killam Fellowship, Killam Faculty Research Award, or any other award that provides course release in 2025-26, you are ineligible for a PHH Faculty Fellowship. Awardees will need to confirm that they will remain at UBC for 12 months beyond the award period. 

 

ELIGIBLE EXPENSES

Expenses eligible under the Tri-Agency expense guidelines will be permissible except those related to:

  • Conferences (registration, travel, accommodation, per diem, paper preparation, etc.);
  • Computer equipment purchases;
  • Equipment purchases for short-term use items in excess of $500 that can be rented/borrowed at UBC;
  • Costs for travel or accommodation or honoraria for collaborators to participate in a project locally;
  • Event curation (e.g., honoraria, catering, travel)

 

ACCESS TO FUNDS  

A UBC Research Project Information Form (RPIF) and brief budget will be submitted with your application. Grants for faculty fellows will be transferred to an ORS research account that will be administered by your home department. Funds will be accessible for one year.

 

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 five 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/. 

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. 

 

APPLICATION PROCEDURES 

Please complete the following: 

  • Application Form will be available in January 2025
  • Additional Grant Proposal Attachment pages as per below (see Attachment Requirements)
  • Research Project Information Form (RPIF) (PDF: Click Here)

Note: DOWNLOAD AND COMPLETE the Application Proposal Form IN ADOBE. DO NOT COMPLETE FORM IN BROWSER. 

The completed Application Form and all attachments must be submitted as a single bookmarked PDF. (Note: Attachment formatting requirements and file-naming protocol provided below).  

Application Form Attachments as Described Below 

  1. Detailed Description (maximum 2 pages). A description of the proposed activities that effectively communicates: a. The research questions to be explored through the proposed activities; b. Rationale and significance of the proposed activities grounded in relevant literature; c. The methodology for the research activities; and d. How the Fellowship research will advance public humanities research. <<PDF Bookmark Label: Detailed Description>>
  2. Peer-reviewed publications, grants and awards (no page limit). Please do not submit a full CV but only the aforementioned items. <<PDF Bookmark Label: Principal Applicant Publications & Grants & Awards>> 

For attachments #1-2, note Attachment Requirements. 

The Application Form should be signed by the Applicant and the Applicant’s Department/Unit Head. 

The RPIF should be signed by the Principal Applicant, the Principal Applicant’s Department/Unit Head, and the Faculty Dean or designate, typically the Associate Dean Research. Please check the turnaround times for Department and Faculty signatures.

Attachment Requirements 

The completed Application Form and all attachments must be submitted as a single bookmarked PDF which conforms to the following formatting conventions: 

  • Font: Size 12 pt Times New Roman 
  • Page size: 8 ½” x 11” 
  • Spacing: Single-spaced 
  • Margins: Minimum ¾ inch (1.87 mm) 
  • Whole PDF must be Bookmarked 

(How to bookmark a PDF) 

(How to merge PDFs) 

Please save these documents, in this order, as a single, bookmarked PDF file and name the Application and the RPIF files by using the following respective formats: 

FacultyFellowship2025Applicantsurname.pdf  

FacultyFellowship2025ApplicantsurnameRPIF.pdf

Please upload both the bookmarked form & attachments as a single PDF, as well as the RPIF PDF, via the online submission form below.

Proposals are due March 14, 2025. 

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

 

APPLICATIONS WILL OPEN IN JANUARY 2025