Research Faculty Fellowships

The UNL Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) is seeking proposals from University of Nebraska faculty for one-year research faculty fellowships in digital humanities research for the 2008/09 fiscal year. The intent of the fellowships is to advance knowledge in a subject or field through the digital medium or to offer new perspectives on a subject using advanced digital technologies. Such research projects are primarily directed toward other experts or scholars. We anticipate that most Research Faculty Fellows will come from the College of Arts and Sciences, but we welcome proposals for eligible humanities projects from any part of the University. In offering these fellowships, the Center assumes the scholar has already conducted significant research on the topic.

Research Faculty Fellows

Research Faculty Fellows receive a budget (ranging from $5,000 to $15,000), access to computer equipment and software, and technical support from highly trained staff during the first year. Less intensive technical support will extend into a second year. After that time, projects are expected to be for the most part self-supporting. All Research Faculty Fellows retain their standing as Research Faculty Fellows of the Center throughout the active life of their projects, but the major portion of technical assistance will be provided during the initial year in residence. Through the Center, faculty will have access to staff that can provide assistance with web design, project planning, text encoding, grant writing, digital preservation, and copyright questions. By the end of the first year, we expect fellows to have developed a pilot web site on their topic.

Whenever possible, fellows should match support provided by the Center with other funds (internal or external grants or a commitment of department resources). Research Faculty Fellows may wish to secure a course release with money provided by the Center and to match that with a further course release provided by their home departments. We encourage fellows to be resourceful in gathering support and managing research time so as to make possible the initial development of an ambitious project. Typically, there are significant intellectual and labor challenges associated with digital projects. The Center expects to provide fellows with substantial support, but fellows will need to combine that with their own energy, resources, and commitment. Digital projects are often collaborative, multi-year undertakings of a scale that exceeds that of an article or monograph. In the best cases, a project significantly alters scholarship in a field of study. Single investigators or project teams can apply (the overall award limits are the same in either case).

Research Faculty Fellows will spend much of their time at the Center on collection of primary data, digitizing of analog information, development of interpretative essays or other new content, product design and testing of technical and methodological approaches. A significant amount of effort also will be focused, during the fellowship year, on finding outside sources of funding for the continuation or completion of the project. Electronic projects at Nebraska have had good success in attracting federal grant support, and it is important for both the Center and the projects to build on that success.

Expectations of Research Faculty Fellows

Fellows should spend the bulk of their research time on their digital project during the supported year. At the end of the year a Research Report will be posted on the Center's web site to document the progress of the project. Fellows are required to make a presentation late in the spring term–either to the Center staff or to a broader audience, as seems best for each case. In addition, fellows need to submit a one-page single-spaced analytical statement about the funded year to be filed with the Center co-directors and the chair of the fellow's home department.

Research Faculty Fellows directing projects are expected to follow international standards and best practices, and to seek copyright permissions for any texts, images, audio, and/or video that will be used on their sites. Copyrights must be clearly negotiated during the pilot year and copies of the permissions forms must be filed with the Center before projects are made available to the public. Whenever possible, we encourage scholars to provide their own photographs or to hire a photographer for a specific project.

Examples of Fundable Projects

Creation of dictionaries of endangered languages involving the use of Unicode.

Creation of online concordances, bibliographies, calendars of letters, encyclopedias, and other reference materials to aid humanities scholars.

Online scholarly or variorum editions of the works (or some part of the works) of an author or classicist.

Historical studies of modern languages or literatures that contribute to an understanding of the development of languages or cultural practices of other nations or peoples.

Virtual archives of the letters, poems, newspapers, or other manuscripts associated with an individual or a subject in the humanities, with scholarly annotation and interpretation. New digital content that is interpretive in nature.

Development of geographic databases for tracking the movement of peoples, railroads, or the study of geographical features associated with historical events through time and space. Creation of new maps for humanistic research.

Developing online tools to assist humanists in studying texts, creating visualizations of time and space, and other scholarly endeavors.

Studies to significantly advance international metadata standards.

Creation of new photographic studies using original images. Images created must be clear of copyright infringement.

Creation and performance of original musical compositions on the web in association with international conferences based at UNL.

Presenting significant new source materials or arguments on all aspects of the history of architecture or art, of all times and places. Images used or created must be original and clear of copyrights, or copyrights must be negotiated in advance.

Examples of projects that are not fundable through the Center

Pedagogical projects aimed primarily at instructing students.

Verbatim electronic versions of print books (e.g. PDFs).

Application Procedures

Application materials are due by 5:00 p.m., Mon. 16 April 2008. Projects will be judged on their intellectual interest, research promise, and likelihood to gain external funding. Awards for 2008/09 will be announced in May 2008.

We invite you to make an appointment to discuss your proposal with the co-directors Ken Price (kprice2@unl.edu) and Kay Walter (kwalter1@unl.edu) prior to submitting an application.

Application Form [MS Word]