Please note: There are now three deadlines for the Scholarly Development Fund. Only apply when you will be expending the funds in next three to four months, otherwise wait for the next deadline. The Dresher Center cannot fund travel or conference expenses retroactively; other retroactive expenses will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
September 15, December 15, and April 15
This fund is intended to provide research-related support to full-time tenure-track faculty, as well as graduate (M.A. and Ph.D.) students pursuing humanities-based research (such as archival work, fieldwork, or interviews) in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Please note: Applicants should not simultaneously apply to more than one CAHSS research center small grant programs for faculty and PhD students (e.g.,the CS3’s Small Research Grants or CIRCA’s Contingency Fund). Applicants should first apply to the center that best suits the nature of their project and receive a determination on that application, before requesting funding from another center. In such cases, please indicate whether funding has already been applied for and/or received from one of the other centers.
All funding requests will be reviewed by the Dresher Center Director and Associate Director. This fund is intended only for scholars who have already exhausted other UMBC funding (DRIF, departmental, CAHSS, or Graduate Student Association). The maximum award to an individual is $2,000.
The following list offers examples of potentially fundable expenses. All expenditures must be connected to humanities-related activities:
- Research travel to archives or to speak at symposia or conferences (where not funded through other sources)
- Services of a research or editorial assistant
- Transcription or other technical assistance
- Purchase of research-related materials (books, documents, copies, images, maps, etc)
The Dresher Center uses the National Endowment for the Humanities’ definition of the humanities: “The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.”