State and Impact of the Humanities Grant Program

A new grant program from the Office of Data and Evaluation will support data-grounded research studies that investigate the state, impact, and value of the humanities in the United States. 

Two levels of funding (up to $75,000 and up to $150,000) will support either one- or two-year projects that should employ at least one empirical study design. Approaches may be quantitative, qualitative, or mix-method, and while supported projects may draw on data acquired as well as pre-existing data sets, they must involve data analysis activities that occur during the period of performance. 

Project teams may be from a single institution or multiple institutions. Team members may be interdisciplinary or international, however there must be at least one collaborator who is actively working in the humanities. 

Activities supported through this program may include, but are not limited to:  

• Planning: meetings, convenings, and community events  
• Data collection: archival research, interviews, focus groups, web scraping, and surveys  
• Digitization: scanning, metadata, storing, and publication of digital materials  
• Data analysis: cleaning, coding, visualization, and statistical analysis  
• Communication: writing, publication, social media, podcasts, and conferences  
• Dissemination: workshops, seminars, forums, and public lectures  

All proposed projects must seek to understand the state, impact, and value of the humanities in one or more of the following research categories: 

1. Humanities Education: Elementary (K–5), middle (6–8), and secondary (9–12) education; post-secondary education (associates, undergraduate, and graduate programs); and educational programming outside of degree-granting learning environments.   
     
2. Humanities Research: Scholarship (for academics, general audiences, or both) conducted within and across humanities disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary research involving humanities questions in the sciences, medicine, law, and other fields.    
     
3. Public Humanities: Humanities work intended to engage with large and diverse public audiences through a broad range of public-facing and publicly accessible formats, such as interpretive museum exhibitions, historic site interpretation, public dialogues, public-facing projects led by educational or cultural organizations, and co-creative community collaborations.   
     
4. Preservation and Access: Preserving and providing access to humanities collections, including community and grassroots preservation initiatives.   
     
5. Humanities Infrastructure: Buildings, institutions, and communities and the financial and other resources that support them. 

Read the full Notice of Funding Opportunity and watch the applicant webinar for additional information about the program. Optional draft project summaries are accepted in this program, with a deadline of February 14, 2025. Reach out to @email with any questions!