The African Critical Inquiry Programme is pleased to announce the 2018 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards to support African doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled at South African universities and conducting dissertation research on relevant topics. Grant amounts vary depending on research plans, with a maximum award of ZAR 40,000.
The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa. The ACIP is committed to collaboration between scholars and the makers of culture/history, and to fostering inquiry into the politics of knowledge production, the relationships between the colonial/apartheid and the postcolonial/postapartheid, and the importance of critical pluralism as against nationalist discourse. ACIP is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).
ELIGIBILITY: The Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards are open to African postgraduate students (regardless of citizenship) in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Applicants must be currently registered in a Ph.D. programme in a South African university and be working on topics related to ACIP’s focus. Awards will support doctoral research projects focused on topics such as institutions of public culture, particular aspects of museums and exhibitions, forms and practices of public scholarship, culture and communication, and the theories, histories and systems of thought that shape and illuminate public culture and public scholarship. Applicants must submit a dissertation proposal that has been approved by their institution to confirm the award; this must be completed before they begin ACIP-supported on-site research or by December 2018, whichever comes first.
Funding is to be used for on-site dissertation research; research cannot be at the applicant’s home institution unless that institution has necessary site-specific research holdings not otherwise available to the applicant. Applicants who have completed significant funded dissertation research by the start of their proposed ACIP research may be ineligible to apply to extend research time. Eligibility will be at the discretion of the ACIP Selection Committee, depending on completed research time and funding. Please note that the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards support dissertation research only and may not be used for dissertation write-up, tuition, study at other universities, conference participation, or to reimburse debts or expenses for research already completed. The programme does not accept applications from Ph.D. programmes in Law, Business, Medicine, Nursing, or Journalism, nor does it accept applications in doctoral programmes that do not lead to a Ph.D.
SELECTION PROCESS: Applications will be reviewed by the ACIP Selection Committee, an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners drawn from a range of universities and cultural institutions. Selection will be based on the merit and strength of the application. Award amounts will vary according to project needs; the maximum award is ZAR 40,000. Awards will be made only if applications of high quality are received. Notification of awards will be made by late July.
Closing date: Applications and referees’ letters must be received on or before Tuesday 1 May 2018. Incomplete applications and applications that do not conform to format guidelines will not be considered.
Please submit materials as a single file attachment with documents in the order listed above. Applications should be sent by email with the heading “ACIP 2018 Research Award Application” to lameezlalkhen@gmail.com.