Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF)

Request for Proposals - Faculty Opportunities

The Social Science Research Council, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, is pleased to announce a call to faculty for interdisciplinary
research field proposals for the 2009 Dissertation Proposal Development
Fellowship (DPDF) program. Established in 2006, the DPDF combines financial
support and workshop experience for early-stage graduate students engaged in
predissertation research and developing their dissertation proposals. The
DPDF program is designed to intervene at a critical moment in the career
development of graduate students in the humanities and social sciences by
aiding their transition from students to researchers. It provides
complementary interdisciplinary perspectives to students across the
disciplines of the social sciences and humanities. Faculty applicants must
be tenured at different doctoral degree-granting programs at US universities
and apply in teams of two. DPDF Research Directors lead groups of 12
graduate student fellows in two four-day workshops Research directors
receive a stipend of USD 10,000 each. More information about the program may
be found at: http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf. <http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf>

Research Fields

A research field refers to subdisciplinary and interdisciplinary domains
with common intellectual questions and styles of research. Research
fields can be topical in focus, transnational in scope, or comparative.
They can be organized around sources, or grounded in geographical
regions. The Council is especially interested in innovative fields of
study that may not yet be adequately supported in academic departments.
The 2008 research fields were: Animal Studies, Human Dimensions of
Global Environmental Change, Muslim Modernities, Science and Technology
Policy, Urban Visual Studies. For 2009, the Council especially seeks
fields touching on environmental issues, religion, and visual culture.
Full descriptions of the 2007 and 2008 research fields are available on
the program Web Site: http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf.

Research Directors

The DPDF Faculty Committee will select five research fields, each proposed
by two faculty research directors with different institutional affiliations
and, as relevant, different disciplinary specializations. With the
assistance of SSRC program staff, research directors run the spring and fall
workshops that bracket the predissertation research of the students.
Research directors should be tenured, experienced supervisors of
dissertation research. Each faculty member will receive a stipend of USD
10,000; students will receive up to USD 5,000 for summer predissertation
research.

Application Requirements and Deadline

The DPDF program invites faculty to submit joint proposals for research
fields for the 2009 fellowship program. The application is available through
the SSRC's application portal, http://applications.ssrc.org/.
Proposals
should describe the relevance of the research field, the kind of graduate
students who might be recruited, and the kinds of activities that would be
entailed in each of the two workshops, along with a short bibliography and
curricula vitae of the two research directors. Applications must be
submitted via the application portal by October 3rd, 2008.

Contact Details

Please direct any questions to program staff at dpdfssrc.org
<mailto:dpdfssrc.org>