Proposals must include at least one full-time NYU faculty member working in the humanities. This would include visiting professors and clinical faculty. Beyond that, there are no restrictions on school, department, or rank, but proposals from faculty in interdisciplinary departments may wish to identify how their research identifies with the humanities.
Because the Seed Grants require departmental administrative continuity, students are not eligible to apply. They may be hired to work on Seed Grants. Students are encourated to apply for the NYU DH Graduate Student Fellowships.
Yes, the program is open to faculty at NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai, and all global network campuses.
Faculty in interdisciplinary departments may apply, and we encourage them to identify how their overall research identifies with the humanities, in addition to the intellectual justification of the particular project and its significance to humanities research.
The Digital Humanities Seed Grants are intended to provide start-up funding for projects in their initial stages. While projects that have already received external funding are likely beyond the initial stages and would not be appropriate for a Seed Grant, projects that have received internal funding may be eligible if they are still in a preliminary phase.
Proposals should not exceed three pages, plus a single-page budget summary, and any necessary letters of commitment.
A timeline of the agenda to be pursued, including key dates and milestones. Preference is given to projects that scope the work to the time available.
You should explain how digital assets created by this project will be managed and preserved. For a sense of full sustainability plans, see statements from NEH and IMLS. Applicants are encouraged to consult with Digital Scholarship Services about the feasibility of their plans and to understand how their projects can leverage existing NYU services and infrastructure. A preference will be given to projects that make any resources (scholarship, code, or data) openly available unless they give a justification here of the ways such openness would be detrimental to individuals or communities.
We recommend that you model your budget on the grants that you aim to apply to. For instance, you could check out the budget recommendations from the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities. The National Institute of Health (NIH) also provides resources to developing your budget. We also encourage you to check out NYU’s Office of Sponsored Programs tools for proposal development.
Grants may range in size between $5,000 and $20,000. Collaborative projects are encouraged, but must include at least one NYU faculty member in the humanities. Final awards may be altered at the recommendation of the evaluation committee.
Permissible expenses include student stipends, course buy-outs, partial summer salary, and technical resources such as specific equipment, server time, or hosting.
Check with the NYU resources for hiring student workers. For many departments, NYU facilitates student hiring with the Handshake web application. If your department does not have its own Handshake account, ask your department administrator about best practices.
For NYU graduate student workers, you must include an additional 30% for overhead (health insurance, etc). For example, if you have a student working 10 hours at $30/hour, you’d put down $390 ($300 in wages + $90 in overhead). For both undergraduate and graduate student workers, you must ensure that your hourly rate meets the university’s minimum wage rates.
Hiring a consultant or specialist outside of NYU is different from department to department. In some cases, you need to go to your department Human Resources. There may be additional requirements to go through paperwork to hire contractors or vendors. If you know you will be looking to hire someone specific, we encourage you to speak with your department when you create your budget.
This program is eager to fund projects that expand the use of various services provided by NYU’s technology resources. In many cases outside collaborators working with NYU teams are able to to create, for example, accounts within the NYU high performance computing cluster with cost. Experts from NYU Libraries and from NYU Research and Instructional Technology are made available for consultation, but programs needing software developers must budget for them.
Personal computer purchases are not permitted. All expenditure must be in compliance with University, School or Department fiscal regulations, whichever is most stringent.
Grantees are required to give two short presentations, either as part of a panel at the Center for the Humanities or in some other agreed-upon setting. One of the presentations will be a five-minute talk at the fall Digital Humanities Showcase. Grantees will also provide a brief white paper outlining the project’s successes, failures, and future potential. Additionally, grantees who receive funding may be called upon to serve on the review panel the following year.
The future agenda section in your application should describe the goals for this project beyond the granting period and how the project results will be sustained. This may include relevant granting programs for a larger version of the project, a description of the impact, or future use of resources created in the grant period. Projects will be given preference that hold promise to expand NYU’s institutional capacity to support and create high-quality digital humanities research.