Engaged Research Grant

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In order to be eligible to apply you must meet one of these two requirements:

I hold a PhD in anthropology or a related discipline.
I am enrolled in a doctoral program to earn a PhD in anthropology or a related discipline.

Do you meet one of these two requirements?

YesNo

STOP NOW.

Engaged Research Grants support research partnerships that empower members of communities that have historically been among those researched in anthropology, rather than researchers themselves. Although your project may involve collaboration with other academics, your partnership should extend much further to involve interlocutors from settings other than universities. Does your project fit this profile?

YesNo

STOP NOW.

Before you begin your application, please consult the Foundation’s

Generative AI Policy.

Thanks so much for applying to Wenner-Gren. Please help us do a better job of selecting reviewers for your project by providing us with some information about yourself and your research interests. We’ll also be asking you for some confidential demographic information. This section, which is voluntary, will help us in our efforts to support anthropologists from diverse backgrounds and scholarly traditions.

Applicant Details

Please Enter Your Legal or Chosen Name

First Name	Middle Name
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What is your Institution (Please enter proper names to search for institutions. We only abbreviate University, not the entire name: New York U, U College London, U California, Davis, etc.)	Institution Not Listed Institution not listed
Institution

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In order to approve your application for funding, U.S. law requires us to collect the following information.

What is your primary citizenship?	Do you hold dual citizenship?
Secondary citizenship	Do you hold additional citizenships?
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Place of birth

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Academic Background

Please tell us about your education.

Highest academic degree	Discipline of degree
Year degree awarded

Institution that awarded the degree (Please enter proper names to search for institutions. We only abbreviate University, not the entire name: New York U, U College London, U California, Davis, etc.)	Institution Not Listed Institution not listed
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Is English your primary scholarly language?	Please select your primary scholarly language
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Is English your institution's primary scholarly language?	Please select the institution's primary scholarly language
Language Not Listed - Contact Primary Scholarly Language not listed	Please provide the institution's primary scholarly language (We are attempting to provide a list that is as inclusive as possible. If your institution's primary scholarly language is not on this list, what is it?)

Longform Questions

Question 1
This program supports research that combats inequality and promotes the flourishing of human and non-human worlds through the mutual production of anthropological knowledge with goal of informing policy, benefiting communities, and producing positive change. Describe the purpose of the research you and your partners will undertake. What will be the focus of your investigation? What is your main research question? What other questions will you need to answer to address it?

The single most important characteristic of a successful proposal is a well-developed research question, hypothesis, or research objective. You should follow these three major guidelines:

1. Narrowly focus your research question, hypothesis, or objective. Ask “why,” “how,” or “what” about an issue of significance to anthropology and the communities involved in your research. Do not present a vast question as the object of investigation; instead, develop answerable questions (or testable hypotheses) in the context of the larger research topic.

2. Do not present your research questions as if you and your partners already knew the answers. Demonstrate that the proposed research has the potential to produce results that lead to new knowledge.

3. Be realistic about what you and your partners can achieve. In other words, avoid claiming that you will address a wide variety of topics without first establishing the core questions that the investigation will answer.

Please keep your response to 1000 words.

Question 2
How does your research combine inspiration from insights from anthropology, other academic disciplines, and non-academic sources? Whose thought will you be building on? Give specific examples of the various lines of work with which you are in dialogue, both within and beyond existing scholarship, and which you are seeking to advance.

It is important to clearly demonstrate that you have a strong grasp of the anthropological literature that is relevant to your research question, as well as other disciplinary literature that is relevant to your topic. Be explicit in showing how your research will expand upon previous work in the field. Wenner-Gren prioritizes research that is theoretically driven, and Question 2 allows you discuss the broader conversations that have guided you in formulating your research questions. It is not enough to just cite literature in answer to this question. Please provide a clear and comprehensive discussion of the issues at stake and demonstrate how your work fits into current debates in the field.

At the same time, it is important to clearly demonstrate that your project is drawing on conceptual resources from outside existing scholarship. These should include non-academic genres and sources of knowledge that have inspired you and your partners. Insight springs from bringing unexpected interlocutors into conversation. In the case of your project, who are these interlocutors and what kinds of knowledge do they bring to the table? How have you brought together academic and non-academic perspectives to formulate your research question and develop an approach to answering it that is compelling and new?

Please keep your response to 1500 words.

Question 3
Describe your collaboration. Who are the partners? What constituencies do they represent? How did they decide to undertake this research? Who will be responsible for completing the different phases of the project? Describe the process used to identify the research question and design methods for addressing it. As part of this application, we require you to provide documentary evidence of commitment from the stakeholders involved in the collaboration. Please explain why the evidence you are providing is appropriate, given local norms.

Convince us that your project entails the mutual production of knowledge. Explain how the academic and non-academic partners worked together to develop this proposal. Get into the details. How often did you meet? Who set the agenda? Were there pre-existing protocols for research that you and your partners had to follow? What did the partners do to ensure that this project accords with the values and expectations of the people who will be affected by it?

Please keep your response to 1000 words.

Question 4
Research methodology. What evidence/data will you need to collect to answer your research question? How will you and your partners go about collecting and analyzing this material? Who will provide oversight? What mechanisms will you and your partners use to respond to problems and opportunities that arise in the course of this work?

Applicants are strongly advised to clearly and explicitly demonstrate that the evidence gathered and the analytical procedures proposed will realistically support the research goals expressed in Question 1. At the same time, they need to provide strong evidence of how the collaboration that gave rise to this proposal will carry forward into the next phases of the project, including the collection and analysis of evidence.

Provide a timeline for the research. Demonstrate that you and your partners can complete your planned activities in the allotted time and with the available funds. Come up with a feasible research plan with clearly defined procedures.

If you are planning to conduct the research in phases, provide a timeline and explain why separate trips to the field are necessary.

If you have already received funds from other sources and are applying to Wenner-Gren for either top-up funds or funds to support subsequent phases of the research, you must provide a strong justification for your research. It is not enough merely to say that you will use the additional funds to collect more data. Explain clearly and completely why you are unable to achieve your research objectives with the funds already in hand.

The Foundation supports projects using all appropriate methods of data collection and analysis commonly employed in anthropology, including both qualitative and quantitative methods, laboratory, archival and/or museum research, and fieldwork involving archaeological, survey, or ethnographic techniques.

Please keep your response to 1000 words.

Question 5
Describe the role of the individuals who will participate in the project. How have you and your partners prepared yourselves to do this research? Describe your language competence, technical skills, previous research, and any other relevant experience. Describe any work you and your partners have already done on this project and how this research relates to other research you and your partners have done. You may be working with additional academic and non-academic collaborators. If so, please describe their role in this project and how it will relate to yours.

In assessing your project we pay close attention to the skillset you and your partners will bring to the project. Please be specific when it comes to describing the expertise each of the individuals involved are bringing to this work. Do you and your partners have the language competence and technical training needed for the project? What steps have you taken to prepare? Have you already carried out a pilot project? If so, what data/results are already available? Have you encountered any safety or access issues related to your research? If so, how will you manage them? What are the ethical issues raised by your research? How will you address them?

Please keep your response to 1000 words.

Question 6
Through this program, the Foundation seeks to demonstrate how engagement can foster innovation and further anthropological thought. What contribution will your project make to this mission? Describe how your project will bring new insights to the field as a whole and to the constituencies with a stake in this work. How and with whom will you and your partners communicate your findings, including, for instance, to policy makers, activists, political leaders, and the communities affected by your work?

Your project should expand the horizons and change the mindset of anthropologists, when it comes to their understanding of your topic and the power of engaged research in addressing it. But it should also have the goal of expanding the horizons and change the mindset of your research partners and the broader constituencies they represent. Above all, in some sense, your findings should be actionable: they should contribute to bringing about positive change. For this to happen, you and your partners must have a plan for communicating and acting on your results. You may not be able to describe your plan in detail at this point, but you should have some sense of how you will collaborate in this final phase of your research.

Please keep your response to 1000 words.

Documents

Submit your documents as PDFs. Individual file size maximum: 25 MB.

An Engaged Research Grant Application must include a budget as part of the official application.

Once complied, please convert your proposed budget to PDF format, then upload it below.

Application Budget (PDF up to 25MB)

Applicant's CV (PDF up to 25MB, 5 Pages Maximum)

ERG Bibliography

Support documentation

Please compile any letters or other documentary evidence of commitment from the stakeholders involved in your partnership in a single PDF document. If you are providing this evidence in a language other than English, please include both the original and an English translation.

Optional URL for Figures, Videos, etc.

The Foundation’s Generative AI Policy stresses transparency, pedagogy, and safety. Please recognize that your submission will be judged according to criteria that prioritize originality, and that a proposal entirely generated with the aid of Generative AI is unlikely to meet the standard required for funding. You are responsible for the accuracy and originality of your submission. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to plagiarism: if you use others’ words without attribution, even inadvertently, you will lose any chance of winning an award. What’s more, when you input your proposal into Generative AI, you run the risk of exposing your prose to plagiarism and threatening the confidentiality of your work.

At the same time, the Foundation recognizes that there are safe and ethical ways in which scholars can use Generative AI to enhance their work, from reviewing relevant literature to analyzing data to editing or translating prose. We will not share the following information with our reviewers, but we are interested in understanding how our applicants are using these new tools.

Did you use Generative AI in producing this submission?

YesNo

Please describe the tools you used, the prompts you entered, the tasks you accomplished, and how you checked your work for accuracy.

Please note:

When you click Submit, please wait until you receive confirmation of successful submission before you close this window.

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Which of the following gender identities best describes you? (Select all that apply.) WomanManNon-binaryAgenderGender fluidGender queerQuestioningPrefer to self-describePrefer not to answer	Are you transgender?
What are your pronouns? (Select all that apply.) She/HerHe/HimThey/ThemZe/ZirZe/HirPrefer to self-describePrefer not to answer	How would you describe your sexual identity? (Select all that apply.) AsexualBisexualHeterosexual/straightHomosexual/gay/lesbianPansexualQueerQuestioningPrefer to self-describePrefer not to answer

Do you have any disabilities (including physical, sensory, developmental, mental health, intellectual, and learning disabilities, as well as chronic illnesses)?	Do you have caregiving responsibilities?
What is the highest level of education obtained by any of your parents?	Are you experiencing income insecurity? We're interested in knowing whether your stipend or salary cover your basic needs.