Description:

The Democracy Scholarship Small Grant Program is an internal investment initiative aimed at advancing scholarship that addresses grand challenges in democracy and civic engagement, offering support through two tracks: 1) single investigator and disciplinary teams; and 2) interdisciplinary teams. 

For the purposes of this program, interdisciplinary scholarship will be defined as: scholarship that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions require fundamental research advances in multiple disciplines and research areas. Projects proposed under the interdisciplinary team track must include more than one discipline, even if these disciplines are within the same department or the same college, and must be justified within the proposal.

At its core, the program embraces a broad and Inclusive definition of democracy scholarship, welcoming a diverse range of scholarly approaches. These may Include theoretical, empirical, design, or performative methods, from any discipline or combination of disciplines. It Is essential to emphasize that democracy scholarship, as defined by this program, spans a wide spectrum of topics. Examples include, but are not limited to: democratic governance, processes, and institutions; civic infrastructure; conflict, polarization and conflict resolution, communications and democracy; democratic innovations; democratization of science; artistic representations of democracy; and more.   Scholarship related to any sociopolitical scale and geography are welcome.

Successful outcomes for projects funded under this program include a wide range of outputs, to include original scholarly work such as a peer-reviewed article, book chapter, edited volume or significant progress on a book project; submission of a grant proposal; artistic work or similar creative endeavors. Synthesis or review articles are encouraged.