• Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard: 2015 Commission Application
• FAS Publication Fund for Tenure-Track Faculty

The Research and Development program supports projects that address major challenges in preserving or providing access to humanities collections and resources. These challenges include the need to find better ways to preserve materials of critical importance to the nation's cultural heritage--from fragile artifacts and manuscripts to analog recording and digital assets subject to technological obsolescence--and to develop advanced modes of organizing, searching, discovering, and using such materials. 

This program recognizes that finding solutions to complex problems often requires forming interdisciplinary project teams, bringing together participants with expertise in the humanities; in preservation; and in information, computer, and natural science. 

All projects must demonstrate how advances in preservation and access would benefit the cultural heritage community in supporting humanities research, teaching, or public programming.

For more information, see here.

The Arts

Under the Arts program, the Foundation encourages "hands-on" and participatory collaborations between established cultural institutions, artists and communities. Specific program interests include:

• Art for viewing and listening;
• Art education in school;
• Art and performing arts festivals;
• Art (murals and sculpture) that beautifies or inspires a community;
• Programs that bring symphony, opera and theatre to the community; and
• Adult and/or children's museum education programs.  

For more information, see here.

Digital Projects for the Public

The Digital Projects for the Public program supports projects such as websites, mobile applications, games,and virtual environments that significantly contribute to the public's engagement with humanities ideas. Projects must be analytical and deeply grounded in humanities scholarship in a discipline such as history, religion, anthropology, jurisprudence, or art history.

Projects can have specific targeted audiences (including K-12 students), but they should also strive to cultivate a more inclusive audience. NEH welcomes applications for smaller digital components of a larger project.

For more information, see here.

Bridging Cultures through Film: International Topics

The Bridging Cultures through Film: International Topics program supports films that examine international themes and subjects in the humanities. The films are meant to spark Americans' engagement with the broader world by exploring countries and cultures outside of the United States. 

The program invites a wide range of approaches to international topics and themes, such as: an examination of a critical issue in ethics, religion, literature, or history, viewed through an international lens; an exploration of a topic that transcends a single nation-state; a biography of a foreign leader, writer, artist, or historical figure; or an exploration of the history and culture(s) of a specific region, country, or community outside of the United States.

For more information, see here.

Humanities Open Book Program

The Humanities Open Book Program is designed to make outstanding out-of-print humanities books available to a wide audience. By taking advantage of low-cost "ebook" technology, the program will allow teachers, students, scholars, and the public to read humanities books that have long been out of print. 

NEH and the Mellon Foundation are soliciting proposals from academic presses, scholarly societies, museums, and other institutions that publish books in the humanities to participate in the Humanities Open Book Program. Applicants will provide a list of previously published humanities books along with brief descriptions of the books and their intellectual significance. 

For more information, see here.

Institute of Advanced Study Fellowship Program

The Institute of Advanced Study is Durham University's major interdisciplinary research institute, providing a central forum for debate and collaboration across the entire disciplinary spectrum. The Institute seeks to catalyze new thinking on major annual themes by bringing together leading international academics as well as writers, artists and practitioners. 

The theme for 2016/17 is "Scale," interpreted in its broadest sense--scientifically, symbolically, legally, philosophically, literarily, politically, economically, and sociologically. Applicants may be from any academic discipline and may come from anywhere in the world. Fellowships last three months (October - December 2016 or January - March 2017).

For more information, see here.

United States Department of Education

Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need

The GAANN Program provides grants to academic departments and programs of institutions of higher education to support graduate fellowships for students with excellent academic records who demonstrate financial need and plan to pursue the highest degree available in their course of study at the institution.

A project must provide fellowships in one or more of the following areas of national need: Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies; Biological Sciences/Life Sciences; Chemistry; Computer and Information Sciences; Engineering; Foreign Languages; Mathematics; Nursing; Physics; Psychology; and Educational Evaluation, Research, and Statistics.
 

For more information, see here.

United States Department of State

Creative Arts Exchange

The goals of the Creative Arts Exchange (CAE) are to: 

• Promote mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries; 
• Provide unique opportunities for artistic collaboration, engagement, and/or performance between American artists and international participants; 
• Convey the diversity and high artistic merit of the arts in America as well as increase awareness and understanding of American art, culture, values and society for international participants and audiences; 
• Foster opportunities for educational outreach and community engagement with diverse and underserved communities, especially youth, women, and persons with disabilities;
• Engage participants in instructive and informative experiences in their art form;
• Provide unique opportunities for artistic collaboration, engagement and/or performance that enrich American and international artists and arts experts; and
• Create opportunities for sustaining relationships and collaboration between U.S. and international artists and institutions that endure beyond program duration.

For more information, see here.

The "Islam, Modern Nation State and Transnational Movements" program is aimed at researchers who, with an eye to current developments, are examining the emergence of political movements in the Islamic world at the national and/or transnational level. Historical studies are encouraged and supported, together with projects in the areas of religious, cultural or political science.

Proposals will be supported that address the dynamics between Islamic teachings, Islamism, nationalism and transnational orientations and environments. Project deliverables should be able to make a contribution to diverse and expert discussions in public and political circles.

This program supports projects that fall within five individual research areas:

• Historical and present day Islamic systems of society and state;
• The concept of nation, national movements and nationalism in Islamic civilization;
• Islamic fundamentalism or Islamic emancipation;
• Transnational civil society movements in the Islamic world;
• Islamic states in the international world system. 

For more information, see here.

The Foundation considers major grant applications in the fields of libraries, education, hospitals and clinics.

Grants for Libraries: Applications will be considered for resource Endowments (print, film, electronic database, speakers/workshops), capital construction, and innovative equipment. Projects fostering broader public access to global information sources utilizing collaborative efforts, pioneering technologies, and equipment are encouraged.

Grants for Educational Institutions: Applications will be considered for: educational endowments to fund scholarships; endowments to support fellowships and teaching chairs; and erection or endowment of buildings and equipment for educational purposes.

For more information, see here.

Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation 

The Arts Writers Grant Program supports individuals whose work addresses contemporary visual art through grants in the following categories: articles, blogs, books, new and alternative media, and short-form writing. It aims to support the broad spectrum of writing on contemporary visual art, from general-audience criticism to academic scholarship. Designed to encourage and reward writing about contemporary art that is rigorous, passionate, eloquent and precise, as well as to create a broader audience for arts writing, the Arts Writers Grant Program aims to strengthen the field as a whole and to ensure that critical writing remains a valued mode of engaging the visual arts.

For more information, see here.

In the humanities and cultural studies, "originality" is key quality. But it is also precisely in these disciplines that the definition of what is "original," "new" or "innovative" is difficult to determine.

The initiative aims to promote the exploration of research ideas of groundbreaking originality in the humanities and cultural studies. Funding will be made available for initial exploration of the research idea. 

This initiative offers two types of funding mechanisms:

• Individual Researchers: to explore the idea and subsequently describe it in an essay;
• Research Teams: for up to four applicants to work together on a new research idea and test its feasibility in an initial exploratory phase, and subsequently co-author a publication on the results.

For more information, see here.

National Institutes of Health

The purpose of this program is to support mechanistic clinical studies aimed at understanding the impact of arts-based approaches in palliative care for symptom management. The objective is to understand the biological, physiological, neurological, and/or sociological mechanisms by which the arts exert their effects on symptom management during and throughout the palliative care continuum.

The goal of this program is for the research to develop an evidence-base that could be used as a basis for the uptake of arts-based therapies in palliative care settings, among individuals across the lifespan, with a wide variety of serious chronic conditions and their accompanying symptoms. This program is not intended to determine the efficacy or the comparative effectiveness of interventions, or to assess interventions designed to treat the underlying cause of a particular disease state.

For more information, see here.

National Endowment for the Humanities 

The Preservation and Access Education and Training program supports libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations across the country maintain important collections of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture collections, electronic records, and digital objects. 

Education and Training grants are awarded to organizations that offer national or regional (multistate) education and training programs. Grants aim to help the staff of cultural institutions, large and small, obtain the knowledge and skills needed to serve as effective stewards of humanities collections. Grants also support educational programs that prepare the next generation of conservators and preservation professionals, as well as projects that introduce the staff of cultural institutions to new information and advances in preservation and access practices.

For more information, see here.

The Bellagio Residency program offers academics, artists, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners a serene setting conducive to focused, goal-oriented work, and the unparelleled opportunity to establish new connections with fellow residents from a stimulating array of disciplines and geographies.

Residencies last between two and four weeks anytime between February 8 and August 8, 2016. The program is especially interested in applicants whose work contributes to the well-being of humanity or in some way connects with the Rockefeller Foundation's issue areas of: Advance Health, Revalue Ecosystems, Secure Livelihoods, and Transform Cities. 

This program seeks applications from university or think tank-based academics at mid to senior-level positions with a record of significant achievement in their field.

For more information, see here.

Massachusetts Cultural Council

The goal of the YouthReach Initiative is to promote integration of substantive out-of-school arts, humanities, and science opportunities into a collaborative community response to the needs of young people--specifically those at risk of not making a successful transition to young adulthood.

YouthReach supports innovative programs that:

• Provide young people with in-depth arts, humanities, or science experiences that simultaneously pursue excellence and youth development;
• Demonstrate a clear understanding of the needs of participating young people and their communities;
• Provide young people an opportunity to interact directly with practicing professionals in their field;
• Are assets-based and believe in the capacity of all young people to create; and
• Marshal the resources of the community to foster substantive cross sector collaboration to support art making as a vital tool for youth and community development.

For more information, see here.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 

The UNESCO programme serves as a means of building the capacities of higher education and research institutions through the exchange of knowledge and sharing, in a spirit of international solidarity. The programme covers training, research and exchange of academics and offers a platform for information sharing in all fields. The majority of projects are interdisciplinary. 

Because of the nature and flexibility of the Chairs Programme, universities can respond more readily and with greater autonomy to the demands for new learning and research in a world undergoing rapid economic, social and technological change.

For more information, see here.

National Endowment for the Humanities 

Fellowships support research on modern Japanese society and political economy, Japan's international relations, and U.S.-Japan relations. Appropriate disciplines for the research include anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, linguistics, political science, psychology, public administration, and sociology.

Fellowships are designed for researchers with advanced language skills whose research will require use of data, sources, and documents in their original languages or whose research requires interviews onsite in direct one-on-one contact. Fellows may undertake their projects in Japan, the United States, or both, and may include work in other countries for comparative purposes.

For more information, see here.

National Endowment for the Humanities 

Fellowships support individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both. Recipients usually produce articles, monographs, books, digital materials, archaeological site reports, translations, editions, or other scholarly resources in the humanities. Projects may be at any stage of development.

Fellowship recipients may begin their fellowship tenure as early as January 2016 or as late as September 2016.

For more information, see here.

Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships

Five Poetry Fellowships will be awarded to young poets in the United States. Fellowships are intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry. 

Applicants must be at least 21 years of age and no older than 31 years of age as of April 30, 2015. 

For more information, see here.

Harpo Foundation

New Work Project Grants

New Work Project Grants are made to non-profit organizations in support of new work by under-recognized artists 21 years or older. Applications are evaluated on the basis on the quality of the artist's work, the potential to expand aesthetic inquiry, and its relationship to the foundation's priority to provide support to visual artists who are under-recognized by the field.

The Foundation considers proposals that directly support the production of new work by visual artists and/or collaborative teams. This production may happen in the context of an installation, public intervention, residency, or exhibition.

For more information, see here.