New multi-sponsored opportunity encourages humanities and social science research using large-scale data analysis, challenging scholars to develop international partnerships and explore vast digital resources, including electronic repositories of books, newspapers, and photographs to identify new opportunities for scholarship.

Deadline: January 30, 2009 The Coming Up Taller Awards recognize and support outstanding community arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America's young people, provide them learning opportunities and chances to contribute to their communities. These awards focus national attention on exemplary programs currently fostering the creative and intellectual development of America's children and youth through education and practical experience in the arts and the humanities. Accompanied by a cash award, the Coming Up Taller Awards not only reward these projects with recognition, but also contribute significant support to their continued work.

Deadlines: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26 for projects starting 4/10

Production grants support the preparation of a program for distribution. 

• offer cross-platform distribution of humanities content that combine radio or television programs with programs using emerging technologies, museum exhibitions, reading and discussion programs, and other formats that expand and enhance the program’s humanities content, deepen the audiences’ experience of the content, engage audiences in new ways, and expand the distribution of programs;
• include but are not limited to DVDs, Web sites, games, virtual environments, streaming, video on demand, and podcasts, as well as user-generated content;
• engage in simultaneous production of a broadcast program and interactive companion content in order to extend the educational experience of the program’s audience, use resources efficiently, and keep the humanities ideas at the center of the project as the broadcast program and the interactivity are designed;
• engage public audiences interactively in exploring humanities ideas and questions by using new ways to contextualize, interpret, and distribute content;
• result in large-scale, collaborative programs featuring multiple formats; and
• build new programs around previously funded NEH projects using complementary formats that will add new dimensions to the original project, and take advantage of new formats and technologies to reach audiences that were not served by the original project.

Deadlines: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26/09 for projects starting 4/10

Grants for America’s Media Makers support media projects that explore significant events, figures, or developments in the humanities and offer creative and new approaches to humanities content.

• offer cross-platform distribution of humanities content that combine radio or television programs with programs using emerging technologies, museum exhibitions, reading and discussion programs, and other formats that expand and enhance the program’s humanities content, deepen the audiences’ experience of the content, engage audiences in new ways, and expand the distribution of programs;
• advance the role of cultural repositories in online teaching, learning, and research for public audiences, teachers, students, and scholars;
• include but are not limited to DVDs, Web sites, games, virtual environments, streaming, video on demand, and podcasts, as well as user-generated content;
• engage in simultaneous production of a broadcast program and interactive companion content in order to extend the educational experience of the program’s audience, use resources efficiently, and keep the humanities ideas at the center of the project as the broadcast program and the interactivity are designed;
• engage public audiences interactively in exploring humanities ideas and questions by using new ways to contextualize, interpret, and distribute content;
• result in large-scale, collaborative programs featuring multiple formats; and
• build new programs around previously funded NEH projects using complementary formats that will add new dimensions to the original project and take advantage of new formats and technologies to reach audiences that were not served by the original project.

Application Deadline: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26/09 for projects starting 4/10

Grant funds can support all typical activities connected with project implementation and production, including:

• final exhibition design and fabrication, as well as crating and shipping;
• final consultation with scholars or other advisers;
• Web site development;
• completion of interactive program components;
• publication costs for complementary materials, including catalogues and curriculum guides;
• publicity expenses;
• staff training specifically for the project’s interpretive programs;
• development of teachers’ guides and curriculum materials;
• presentation and distribution of public programs and related materials; and
• audience evaluation.

Deadlines: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26/09 for projects starting 4/10

Planning grants can be used to plan, refine, and develop the content and interpretive approach of a project and may be used for:

• meetings with scholars and other content advisers, program partners, and representatives of target audiences or other key personnel involved in the project;
• preliminary audience evaluation and beta testing of digital materials;
• travel to archives, collections, sites, or other resources;
• drafting of text for program or discussion guides, exhibition labels, brochures, publications, or other interpretive materials;
• preliminary design for any of the interpretive formats to be used;
• general preparation of the associated programs and materials for dissemination; and
• planning for training for docents, discussion coordinators, or other relevant interpretive leaders for the project.

Deadline: May 5, 2009 Challenge grants augment or establish endowments that support humanities activities in education, public programming, scholarly research, and preservation. Examples include:

• faculty and staff positions,
• fellowships,
• lecture or exhibition series,
• visiting scholars or consultants,
• publishing subventions,
• maintenance of facilities,
• faculty and staff development,
• acquisitions, and
• preservation or conservation programs.

Deadline: May 5, 2009 Challenge grants augment or establish endowments that support humanities activities in education, public programming, scholarly research, and preservation. Institutions may use the income from invested funds to meet ongoing humanities-related costs. Examples include:

• faculty and staff positions,
• fellowships,
• lecture or exhibition series,
• visiting scholars or consultants,
• publishing subventions,
• maintenance of facilities,
• faculty and staff development,
• acquisitions, and
• preservation or conservation programs.

Deadline: July 1, 2009 These grants support national or regional (multi-state) education and training programs on the care and management of, and the creation of intellectual access to, library, archival, and material culture collections.

• digitizing collections;
• arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
• cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving image, art, and material culture;
• preservation reformatting;
• deacidification of collections; and
• preserving and improving access to humanities resources in “born digital” form.

Deadline: January 30, 2009 This funding opportunity offers successful applicants a $2,500 grant from NEH for exhibition-related expenses and for exhibition programming.

Deadline: May 14, 2009 Preservation Assistance Grants help small and mid-sized institutions, such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, ... and colleges and universities, improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections. These may include special collections of books and journals, archives and manuscripts, prints and photographs, moving images, sound recordings, architectural and cartographic records, decorative and fine arts, textiles, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, furniture, and historical objects.

• General preservation assessments
• Consultations with professionals to address a specific preservation issue, need, or problem
• Purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies
• Purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for humanities collections
• Education and Training

Deadline: February 18, 2009

The goals of the Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program are to:

• bring together humanities scholars and digital technology specialists from different disciplines to share ideas and methods that advance humanities research through the use of digital technologies;
• reflect on, interpret, and analyze new digital media, multimedia, and text-based computing technologies and integrate these into humanities research;
• prepare current and future generations of humanities scholars to design, develop, and use cyber-based tools and environments for research;
• devise new and creative uses for technology that offer valuable models that can be applied specifically to research in the humanities.

NEH strongly encourages applicants to develop proposals for multidisciplinary teams of co-applicants, partners, and collaborators that will offer the necessary range of intellectual, technical, and practical expertise. This program is designed to bring together humanities scholars, advanced graduate students, computer scientists, and others to learn new tools and technologies and to foster relationships for future collaborations in the humanities. Partners and collaborators may be drawn from the private and public sectors and include appropriate specialists from within and outside the United States.

NEH main grants page

Overview of NEH programs