The 2006-07 Call for Projects

In the coming academic year, SHL has defined an agenda to:

1. Animate archives - making the record of the past accessible and interactive;
2. Facilitate co-creative collaborative work - as a complement to the figure of the lone scholar, and because the whole is always more than the sum of the parts;
3. Build bigger pictures - putting specialized in-depth research into the context of the big human questions facing us all today.

1. New media;
2. Virtuality;
3. Transforming, "animating", and reconfiguring archives;
4. Simulation/gaming; and
5. New modes of collaborative and/or procedural authoring and design.

Project design considerations.

By their very nature, SHL projects are exploratory and experimental. They do, however, share some fundamental features:

• Collaboration is an essential feature. The research team (whatever its composition) meets regularly every quarter.
• Projects have a small group -- two to four people -- of core personnel, who are ultimately responsible for the success of the project. In addition, each team has a project manager who oversees details of budgets, scheduling, etc., and serves as point person for the SHL staff.
• Research bridges disciplines and often links the humanities to the arts, the sciences, and technology.
• Projects are output-oriented, culminating in work that falls outside the traditional boundaries of humanities scholarship.
• They include some sort of outreach dimension that attempts to reach non-specialist audiences. There is also a curricular component to most projects.
• The time frame is finite -- generally one to three years.
• Research fellows include both graduate students and undergraduate interns (in addition to other members of the scholarly community).

Who is eligible to apply?

During the pilot phase, at least one of the core personnel must be an active member of the Stanford community (including Stanford University Libraries and Cantor Center for the Visual Arts). The research team can comprise scholars of any stage, from on or off campus -- university staff, postdoctoral students, faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. The project manager should also be a Stanford affiliate.

When is the deadline?

Please submit proposals by August 1, 2006. Award notifications will be made by September 1, 2006.

Where should applications be sent?

Send applications to

Stanford Humanities Laboratory
attn: SHL Selection Committee
Wallenberg Hall
450 Serra Mall, Building 160
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2055

What form should applications take?

You can download the application form in either Microsoft Word or PDF format. A completed application should be submitted to cockayne@stanford.edu before August 1, 2006

What can SHL funds be spent on?

SHL funds can cover equipment, technical and organizational assistance, travel to collections, financial support for students, materials, permissions, and meeting costs (no more than 5% of the total budget). SHL cannot buy out faculty time, nor can it supplement the salaries of Stanford staff.

How are funds administered?

Funds are administered directly through the SHL office. Precise instructions regarding financial administration are provided to successful applicants upon notification of their award.

How are applications evaluated?

Applications are evaluated by a committee of six scholars from the humanities, arts, and sciences according to the criteria detailed above. The questions that applicants should particularly keep in mind when putting together their proposals are:

• Does the project uphold the highest standards of contemporary scholarship?
• Is the project truly based upon teamwork and collaboration?
• Does the project envisage an innovative output that either combines traditional outputs with new ones or devises new outputs altogether?

Reasons that past applications have been rejected include the following:

• The project was not truly grounded in the humanities.
• The project was unclear about the intended output, had no clear output in sight, or did not adequately consider how to achieve its aims.
• Student researchers were not envisaged as full-fledged academic team members but errand-runners, data-entry workers, etc.
• The proposed research team was ill-adapted to the project goals.
• There was no room for undergraduates on the team.
• The project goals did not carry humanistic thought forward but merely replicated past research.
• The applicants were unaware of research already done on the subject.
• The proposal did not communicate effectively the ways that it meets SHL criteria.

If you have any questions, contact Associate Director Bill Cockayne.