In Partnership with Mandel Center for the Humanities
The Mandel Center for the Humanities is pleased to inaugurate Dissertation Innovation Grants of $2,000-$4,000 to support innovative dissertation work by current Brandeis PhD students at any stage in their degree program. The grant supports students interested in or currently pursuing non-traditional dissertation research, meaning work that is practical, collaborative, and/or community-engaged, as well as work that might be published in other forms besides the traditional, proto-monograph dissertation. The grant will fund projects that have audiences beyond the academy, projects in the experimental or digital humanities, applied humanities work, work that experiments with different voices, and/or collaborative projects that create and sustain mutually beneficial partnerships with community organizations, museums, libraries or other cultural spaces or media. A supplemental award of $1,000, funded by COMPACT, is available to students who wish to explore opportunities for deepening the community engaged aspects of their research, including (but not limited to) developing a partnership with a community-based organization or adding a community-engaged component to their project design. We especially encourage applications from students early in their degree program who are considering applying for the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships and who can use this grant to develop a project that can be used to apply to the Mellon/ ACLS grant next year. Grant winners will be asked to present their work at an event on new directions for the dissertation sometime in 2024-25. All funds must be used by June 30, 2025 or an extension must be filed by that date. The application deadline is February 1, 2024.