Funding Your Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences A Practical Guide to Grant and Fellowship Proposals

1. Introduction  2. Finding Funding  3. Assessing Funding Fit and Feasibility  4. Getting Ready to Write  5. Focusing the Research Idea as Grant or Fellowship Proposal  6. Writing a Strategic Proposal  7. Writing the Introduction/Statement of Problem/Statement of Purpose  8. Writing the Significance and Contribution Section  9. Writing the Methods Section  10. Writing the Budget and Budget Justification  11. Other Proposal Sections  12. Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Research  13. Funding for Public Scholarship  14. Failure or Success – What Next?  15. Resources  16. An Epilogue to Institutional Leadership

Biography

Barbara L.E. Walker, Ph.D. is the Director of Strategic Research Initiatives in the Office of Research and Special Assistant for Academic Initiatives in the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Holly E. Unruh, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Arts Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"This guide is an essential, one‑of‑a‑kind resource for grant seeking and proposal development in fields where publicly available guidance and dedicated support are limited. Rigorously researched and richly detailed, it demystifies every stage of the process and enables humanities, arts, and social science scholars to pursue funding with confidence and clarity."

- Kayla Dryden, M.A., Executive Director, Research Development and Research Development Officer for Arts and Humanities, The University of Texas at Austin

 

"For anyone navigating a love-hate relationship with grant writing in the competitive social sciences, humanities, and arts, this book feels like a gift. It gently and systematically reveals the opaque grant process, translates institutional jargon, and offers generous, grounding guidance. I found it indispensable as a professor launching new research projects."

- Dolores Inés Casillas, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute, University of California Santa Barbara

 

"Meeting proposal writers where they are, the authors move seamlessly from conceptualizing a project to securing support for multiple forms of scholarship, grounding every step in clear and practical guidance. What sets this book apart is its rich use of annotated examples that decode successful proposals and make compelling proposal writing visible and attainable. This is a crucial guide for scholars at every career stage seeking to craft more competitive grant and fellowship applications in the humanities, arts, and social sciences."

- Kris Monahan, Ph.D., Chief Research Administration Officer, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University and Past President of the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA)