Public Humanities Faculty Fellowships Competition

Public Humanities Hub (PHH) Fellowships 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, 2024
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 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

Please complete the following:

Application Form (click here to download)
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

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>>
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 cm)
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:

FacultyFellowship2024Applicantsurname.pdf

FacultyFellowship2024ApplicantsurnameRPIF.pdf

Please upload both the bookmarked form & attachments as a single PDF, as well as the RPIF PDF, via the online submission form at the bottom of this page.

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).

FELLOWSHIPS AWARD & GRANT: BUDGET ELIGIBILITY AND COURSE RELEASE

The Public Humanities Faculty Fellowships will provide a course-release to up to three 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 

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); 
up to $5000 to cover the direct costs of the proposed Fellowship research. 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); and 
administrative support from the Hub staff.

The Hub will also:

help publicize scholars’ research 
promote events related to scholars’ projects on all its communication channels
introduce scholars to relevant community partners
invite scholars to contribute to our Public Scholar Training Series, our Massy Reads series, and/or other Hub programming, and 
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:

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

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 2024-25, 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.

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/. 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.