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 $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 $10,000; students will receive up to $5,000 for summer predissertation research.
Application Requirements and Deadline
The DPDF program invites faculty to submit joint proposals for research fields for the 2010 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 2nd, 2009.
Contact Details
Please direct any questions to program staff at dpdf@ssrc.org