Global Humanities Institutes 2024 - Call for Proposals

Tuesday, September 20, 2022 - 14:30

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 2024. 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.

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 2024 Global Humanities Institutes will meet at least once during the period of July through September 2023 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 2024 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 2023: core partners pre-meeting.
  • November-December 2023: call for participants and their selection.
  • January-May 2024: participants activities leading up to the Institute
  • June-August 2024: 10 to 15 day Global Humanities Institute
  • by end of December 2024: post-Institute activities.

Please use the following link to see the application form and details of the supplementary documentation required. 

THE DEADLINE TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL IS DECEMBER 15, 2022.