Global Humanities Institutes - Call for Proposals
The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes invites proposals for Global Humanities Institutes to take place in 2025. The deadline is December 15, 2023. With generous support from the Mellon Foundation, we expect to fund up to two institutes at the level of $200,000 each.
[A pdf version of this call can be downloaded here]
Overview of Global Humanities Institutes
Global Humanities Institutes (GHIs) are multi-year projects devoted to a research theme, method, practice, or problem in the humanities that will benefit directly from a sustained international and collaborative approach. We encourage teams of scholars representing three or four humanities centers, preferably located in at least three different world regions, to develop a research program that is a model for inclusive collaboration in the humanities and addresses matters that are of compelling importance today.
The centerpiece of each project will be an in-person, ten to fifteen-day institute, flexible in format, of twenty-five to thirty-five participants to be held during June-August 2025. Global Humanities Institutes will also include a pre-meeting, post-meeting activities, a digital component, a plan for publication and other forms of dissemination, and connections to the campuses of the conveners.
For a sense of the rich range of subjects engaged by current and previous Global Humanities Institutes, please refer to the list of GHIs below which details the partnering centers and provides links for more information.
Eligibility, Partnering Centers, and Participants
Directors of centers that are members of CHCI are eligible to propose a Global Humanities Institute. The CHCI member directory can be found here. While the lead organizer of a Global Humanities Institute must be a CHCI member, partner centers can be non-CHCI members at the time of the application. Should the proposal be successful, it is expected that they will become CHCI members.
Directors of centers will work with interested members of their faculty to articulate a compelling approach to their proposed area of inquiry, one of whom could serve as a co-Principal Investigator of the proposal for the Global Humanities Institute. One center will take the lead in developing the partnership among three to four humanities centers; a total of four scholars from the same institution, including the center’s director, may be involved in the institute.
As a guideline we suggest that the participants in the institutes number between twenty-five and thirty-five. Participants include all of the scholars associated with the partnering centers of the Global Humanities Institute (up to four in-person participants per partner center) as well as scholars associated with other CHCI member centers (graduate students and early career scholars) and additional participants from other organizations (for example, artists and activists) that are affiliated with the partnering centers. The graduate students and early-career scholars will be selected by the partnering centers through an open call circulated to the CHCI membership.
Expectations of Global Humanities Institutes
The Director of the applying center will be the Principal Investigator and main contact person for administration of the subaward from CHCI supporting the GHI.
CHCI expects that core members of the partnering centers of the 2025 Global Humanities Institutes will meet at least once during the period of July through October 2024 to organize collaborative activities that will take place over the period of the grant. We also expect that participants will continue their exchange beyond the meeting of the Institute through related programming on their campuses and across the CHCI network, including contributions to IDEAS, CHCI’s online platform.
Participants are expected to publish or otherwise publicize project outcomes, and are encouraged to explore publishing in different formats and regions with the understanding that publication projects will focus on publishing venues or platforms in more than one region and in multiple languages, as a means towards sustaining the international spirit of the projects. A third, post-Institute meeting of the core participants focused on these activities may also be funded.
The two to three meetings convened by the 2025 Institutes should be hosted by different project partners, in-person or following a hybrid model. It is expected that the PI’s home institution will issue and administer subawards to partner centers hosting GHI activities. Plans for each aspect of the multi-year collaboration should be outlined in the proposal, including a pre-meeting, the main Institute, post-meeting plans, a digital component, publications, and connections to partnering campuses and CHCI.
Suggested activities timeline:
- July-October 2024: core partners pre-meeting.
- November-December 2024: call for participants and their selection.
- January-May 2025: participants activities leading up to the Institute.
- June-August 2025: 10 to 15 day Global Humanities Institute.
- by end of December 2025: post-Institute activities.
How to apply?
Use the application form below and upload the following attachments:
A) A narrative, 7 to 12 pages long, including:
- A description of a theme, method, practice, or problem in the humanities that will benefit directly from a sustained collaborative approach between the GHI partners (2 to 3 pages). The description should:
- outline the Institute’s contribution both to the proposed theme and to the broader project of developing models for international research collaboration in the humanities; and
- include a presentation of the intellectual leadership for the Institute.
- A description of a 10 to 15-day long Institute on the theme, including tentative dates, location, and format (1 to 2 pages).
The institute should:- include 25 to 35 in-person participants, half of which should be early career scholars; and
- be represented by no more than 4 in-person participants from each partner center. Other participants will be selected through a call circulated to the CHCI membership.
Note: participants are defined as in-person attendees, organizers and selected early-career scholars, engaged in all the sessions of the main Institute. Guest speakers and performers, as well as remote attendees in the case of a hybrid institute do not count toward that total number.
- A statement on inclusive collaboration, describing your conception of inclusivity in the context of your project and the Institute’s plan. (1 page).
- A communication and publication plan, describing the Institute’s outcomes and including plans for the GHI online presence (website, social media, online events), regular contributions to CHCI’s IDEAS and VOICES platform over the duration of the grant in collaboration with CHCI staff, as well as publication in other venues, formats, and languages to sustain the international spirit of the project (1 to 2 pages).
- Detailed plans for a pre-Institute meeting among the core partners to take place between July 1 and October 31, 2024.
The pre-meeting outcomes should include a plan for the selection of participants as well as activities leading up to the Institute the following year (1 page). - A bibliography on the theme (1 to 2 pages).
B) A budget that will serve as the basis for a subaward agreement to be executed by June 30, 2024. The budget will include:
- A spreadsheet for a budget in the range of 200,000 USD, covering the following categories:
- Salaries
- Fringe benefits
- Subaward to partner centers
- Travel
- Meeting cost (non-travel)
- Publication
- A 2 to 3-page long scope of work describing in more detail the use of funds under each of the categories above.
The deadline to submit a proposal is December 15, 2023.
What are the next steps?
The CHCI Global Humanities Institutes Committee will now identify Institutes that will contribute to new knowledge in the humanities; exemplify forms of collaboration across institutional and national boundaries; and continue to evolve this new model for CHCI. We expect to announce a final selection in mid-March 2024, anticipating that activities would begin after July 1, 2024.
What if we have questions?
CHCI will host two online information sessions in the second half of October 2023, to answer questions from interested centers and institutes. You may access recordings from the 2022 sessions below.
- Tues October 18, 9:30am India Standard Time, serving timezones in Asia and Australasia, and featuring board members Prathama Banerjee, Kathleen Woodward, and Rosinka Chaudhuri (Recording, Youtube)
- Wed October 19, 11:00am Eastern Time, serving timezones in the Americas, Africa, and Europe and featuring board member Kathleen Woodward, Co-President Darryl Harper, as well as PI Katie Rhine from the GHI Chronic Conditions: Childhood and Social Suffering in Global Africa (Recording, Youtube)
For members with further inquiries, please contact Guillaume Ratel, CHCI Executive Director, ratel@berkeley.edu.
Past and Current Global Humanities Institutes
Translation’s Theoretical Issues, Practical Densities: Violence, Memory, and the Untranslatable
July 15-26, 2019 – Santiago, Chile
Partners Centers: Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios en Filosofia, Artes y Humanidades (University of Chile), UC Irvine Humanities Commons (UC Irvine), The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (Oxford University), Centre for Humanities Research (University of the Western Cape).
More information at: https://chcinetwork.org/programs/ghi-2019-translation
