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The Social Science Research Council and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership have announced that applications are now open for the Abe Fellowship for Journalists. The fellowship is designed to encourage in-depth coverage of topics of pressing concern to the United States and Japan through individual short-term policy-related projects. Applicants are invited to submit proposals on one of four themes. 1) Threats to Personal, Societal, and International Security: Topics may include food, water, and energy insecurity; pandemics; climate change; disaster preparedness, prevention, and recovery; and conflict, terrorism, and cyber security. 2) Growth and Sustainable Development: Topics may include global financial stability, trade imbalances and agreements, adjustment to globalization, climate change and adaptation, and poverty and inequality. 3) Social, Scientific, and Cultural Trends and Transformations: Topics may include aging and other demographic change, the benefits and dangers of reproductive genetics, gender and social exclusion, expansion of STEM education among women and underrepresented populations, migration, rural depopulation and urbanization, impacts of automation on jobs, poverty and inequality, and community resilience. 4) Governance, Empowerment, and Participation: Topics may include challenges to democratic institutions, participatory governance, human rights, the changing role of NGO/NPOs, the rise of new media, and government roles in fostering innovation.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) invites investigators at U.S. organizations to submit proposals to the Arctic Sciences Section, Division of Polar Programs (PLR) to conduct research about the Arctic region. The goal of this solicitation is to attract research proposals that advance a fundamental, process, and systems-level understanding of the Arctic's rapidly changing natural environment and social and cultural systems, and, where appropriate, to improve our capacity to project future change. The Arctic Sciences Section supports research focused on the Arctic region and its connectivity with lower latitudes.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) invites investigators at U.S. organizations to submit proposals to the Arctic Sciences Section, Division of Polar Programs (PLR) to conduct research about the Arctic region. The goal of this solicitation is to attract research proposals that advance a fundamental, process, and systems-level understanding of the Arctic's rapidly changing natural environment and social and cultural systems, and, where appropriate, to improve our capacity to project future change. The Arctic Sciences Section supports research focused on the Arctic region and its connectivity with lower latitudes.

The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations is accepting proposals from non-Unitarian Universalist groups in the U.S. and Canada for community organizing campaigns aimed at creating systemic change in the economic, social, and political structures that affect the lives of those who have been excluded from resources, power, and the right to determination. Through the Fund for a Just Society, UUAC supports projects that are less likely to receive conventional funding because of the innovative or challenging nature of the work or the economic and social status of the constituency. UUAC does not fund social services, educational programs, or advocacy projects. Grants are not awarded for the purposes of re-granting, equipment, capital campaigns, politically partisan efforts, educational institutions, medical or scientific research, or cultural programs. The organization will consider the funding of films, publications, or curricula if they are an integral part of a strategy of collective action for social change. UUAC does not fund individuals.

The Thriving Cultures program is based on a belief that communities with robust arts and culture are more cohesive and prosperous, and benefit from the diversity of their residents. We know that artists and cultural organizations can help us explore shared values and spark innovation, imagination and advancement for our communities. Too often, however, arts and culture is undervalued as a catalyst for creating just and sustainable communities, which is a key priority for the Surdna Foundation. The Thriving Cultures Program seeks to create just and sustainable communities in four ways: Teens' Artistic and Cultural Advancement We support artistic training programs that help teens explore their cultural identity and equip them with the life-enhancing skills they need to achieve their educational and career goals. Community Engaged Design We support efforts to involve artists, architects and designers in community-engaged problem solving and development efforts. Artists and Economic Development We support efforts that provide artists with business training and financial resources that enable them to be, and create, valuable economic assets for their communities. Artists Engaging in Social Change We support the potential of artists to be catalysts for social change and to promote the cultural traditions of their communities. We seek organizations that: -Embrace artistic and design excellence; -Find innovative ways to use arts and culture to make communities more just and sustainable; -Prioritize the needs of low-income communities and people of color in their work; -Maintain sound financial practices and management; and -Demonstrate a capacity and willingness to share best practices and knowledge with their colleagues and others in the field.

In recent years, research published by Humanities Indicators, among others, has revealed that humanities PhDs pursue careers in many different professions-both inside and outside academia. Yet most humanities PhD programs in the United States still prepare students primarily for tenure-track professor positions at colleges and universities. The increasing shortage of such positions has changed students' expected career outcomes. NEH therefore hopes to assist universities in devising a new model of doctoral education, which can both transform the understanding of what it means to be a humanities scholar and promote the integration of the humanities in the public sphere. Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning Grants support universities in preparing to institute wide-ranging changes in humanities doctoral programs. Humanities knowledge and methods can make an even more substantial impact on society if students are able to translate what they learn in doctoral programs into a multitude of careers. Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning Grants are designed to bring together various important constituencies to discuss and strategize, and then to produce plans that will transform scholarly preparation in the humanities at the doctoral level. Students will be prepared to undertake various kinds of careers, and humanities PhD programs will increase their relevance for the twenty-first century. Grantee institutions must provide funds raised from nonfederal third parties equal to the grant funds released by NEH.

To mark the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the National Endowment for the Humanities has developed a special project as part of its Bridging Cultures initiative: Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle. Up to 500 communities across the nation will receive a packaged set of NEH-funded films on Civil Rights history, accompanied by programming resources to guide public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in U.S. history. NOTE: Each participating site will receive an award of up to $1,200 to support public programming exploring the themes of the Created Equal project. The films featured in the set are The Abolitionists, Slavery by Another Name, The Loving Story, and Freedom Riders. Applications are open to museums and historical societies; humanities councils; public, academic, and community college libraries; and nonprofit community organizations.

The National Endowment for the Humanities, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, announces the launch of the special initiative, Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle. The project brings together four nationally acclaimed films that connect the stories of the long civil rights movement to spark public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in U.S. history. Up to 500 communities across the nation will receive these four inspiring NEH-funded films on Civil Rights history, accompanied by programming resources to guide public conversations. Each participating site will receive an award of up to $1,200 to support public programming exploring the themes of the Created Equal project.

Humanities Connections grants seek to expand the role of the humanities in the undergraduate curriculum at two- and four-year institutions, offering students in all academic fields new opportunities to develop the intellectual skills and habits of mind that the humanities cultivate. Grant projects focus on connecting the resources and perspectives of the humanities to students' broader educational and professional goals, regardless of their path of study. Through this new grant program, NEH invites proposals that reflect innovative and imaginative approaches to preparing students for their roles as engaged citizens and productive professionals in a rapidly changing and interdependent world. Grants support the development and implementation of an integrated set of courses and student engagement activities focusing on significant humanities content. A common topic, theme, or compelling issue or question must link the courses and activities. The linked courses (a minimum of three) may fulfill general education or core curriculum requirements but could also be designed primarily for students in a particular major or course of study. The Humanities Connections program gives special encouragement to projects that foster collaboration between humanities faculty and their counterparts in the social and natural sciences and pre-service or professional programs in business, engineering, health sciences, law, computer science, and other non-humanities fields.

The Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and Virginia Tech's Special Collections invite applications for the 2014-15 Virginia Center for Civil War Studies Research Grants. Each grant recipient will visit Virginia Tech's Special Collections in order to conduct research on some aspect of the American Civil War era. An honorarium of $100 per business day will be provided, up to a maximum of $1,000. Recipients will also have the opportunity to give an informal presentation on their projects during their visit. Graduate students, faculty members, and independent scholars are all eligible. Virginia Tech's Special Collections contain one of the largest concentrations of Civil War-related research materials in the world, including 10,000 rare and unique printed sources, and hundreds of manuscript collections containing diaries, letters, ledgers, official papers, and other formats. Highlights include soldiers' accounts from both the Union and the Confederacy; printed memoirs and regimental histories; correspondence from the homefront; primary sources focused on slavery and abolitionism; papers documenting political change in Virginia and the South throughout the 1860s; and records of postwar groups focused on memorializing the Civil War. More information about our collections is available at http://spec.lib.vt.edu/civwar/

Historical thinking is now included as a foundation of the Ontario history curriculum. It plays a key role in the new draft social studies curriculum in British Columbia. Other Canadian provinces are moving in the same direction. The summer institute is designed for teachers, graduate students, curriculum developers, professional development leaders and museum educators who want to enhance their expertise at designing and teaching history courses and programs with explicit attention to historical thinking. The 2014 Historical Thinking Summer Institute will explore six historical thinking concepts: evidence significance continuity & change cause & consequence perspective-taking the ethical dimension of history These concepts will shape our exploration of two substantive themes: Aboriginal-settler relations, and human-nature relations over time. We will use local cases, resources and expertise available in Vancouver, but the work will be applicable to other locations across Canada and internationally.

The award holder will engage in research on the changing nature of Quaker involvement with business in the twentieth century. Academic supervision of the doctoral thesis will be overseen by Professor Ben Pink Dandelion (Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies, Department of Theology and Religion).  Applicants should normally have, or be studying for, a Master's degree in Modern History, Religious Studies, Quaker Studies or a related discipline. Experience in archival research is preferred. The studentship is £17,000 per annum, payable termly. The standard University of Birmingham tuition fees will be paid by the student out of their studentship.

NEH therefore hopes to assist universities in devising a new model of doctoral education, which can both transform the understanding of what it means to be a humanities scholar and promote the integration of the humanities in the public sphere. Next Generation Humanities PhD Planning Grants support universities in preparing to institute wide-ranging changes in humanities doctoral programs.

The Gray Family Foundation believes that the field of environmental education must increasingly reflect the diverse populations of Oregon including programming that better represents the diverse perspectives, traditions, knowledge and relationships all people in Oregon bring as active stewards of their natural and built environment.  We accept proposals for planning grants to support organizations, schools and other eligible entities to examine, challenge and change assumptions and practices so that they may be in better service to all Oregon communities. Planning grant recipients will be encouraged to apply for programmatic funds during the next grant cycle. The Gray Family Foundation seeks proposals that support programs providing student field experiences for 3rd through 8th grade students and/or educator professional development. Program applicants may request multi-year funding pending annual grant renewals through the 2020-2021 school year. Program grant applicants must demonstrate alignment with our priorities and reflect the foundations values towards diversity, equity and inclusion.

The British Council is organizing a 11-days training programme on Human Rights Film Making, partnership with Cinema Human Rights and Advocacy (CHRA), scheduled for November 12 to 22 in Myitkyina. The programme offers a combination of lectures, screenings, working groups, group tutoring sessions and technical exercises (shooting on DSLR cameras and editing on Adobe Premiere Pro CC) focussing on the production of a short advocacy film on human rights and/or environmental issues.

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a set of "Big Ideas," 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering (seehttps://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/big_ideas/index.jsp). The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research. As such, when responding to this solicitation, even though proposals must be submitted tothe Division of Emerging Frontiers in the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO/EF),once received, the proposals will be managed by a cross-disciplinary team of NSF Program Directors. The purpose of the Understanding the Rules of Life: Epigenetics (URoL:Epigenetics) program is to enable innovative research and to promote multidisciplinary education and workforce training in the broad area of epigenetics. The URoL:Epigenetics program is a widecollaborationacross Directorates/Offices within the National Science Foundation with a focus on understanding the relationship between epigenetic mechanisms associated with environmental change, the resultant phenotypes of organisms, and how these mechanisms lead to robustness and adaptability of organisms and populations. Understanding the Rules of Life (URoL): PredictingPhenotypeis one of NSF's 10 Big Ideasand is focused on predicting the set of observable characteristics (phenotype) from the genetic makeup of the individual and the nature of its environment.

The Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI) National Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Program provides resources and opportunities to enable police agencies to identify and define their most pressing crime problems and institute lasting operational and organizational changes that foster reliance on and effective use of evidence-based practices, data, and technology.

The Sociology Program supports basic research on all forms of human social organization -- societies, institutions, groups and demography -- and processes of individual and institutional change. The Program encourages theoretically focused empirical investigations aimed at improving the explanation of fundamental social processes. Included is research on organizations and organizational behavior, population dynamics, social movements, social groups, labor force participation, stratification and mobility, family, social networks, socialization, gender roles, and the sociology of science and technology. The Program supports both original data collections and secondary data analysis that use the full range of quantitative and qualitative methodological tools. Theoretically grounded projects that offer methodological innovations and improvements for data collection and analysis are also welcomed. As part of its effort to encourage and support projects that explicitly integrate education and basic research, the Sociology Program provides support to improve the conduct of doctoral dissertation projects undertaken by doctoral students enrolled in U.S. universities when the dissertation research is conducted in a scientifically sound manner and it offers strong potential for enhancing more general scientific knowledge. The Sociology Program funds doctoral dissertation research to defray direct costs associated with conducting research, for example, dataset acquisition, additional statistical or methodological training, meeting with scholars associated with original datasets, and fieldwork away from the student's home campus.

Seed grants of up to $1,000 will be awarded to social entrepreneurs for projects in the early stages of development, including those that promote compassion for all life (people, planet, animals), environmental sustainability, justice in all its forms, community health and wellness, and social change-oriented arts and culture. Only applications for seed funding, as opposed to ongoing operational or program costs, will be accepted.

Communities in the United States (US) and around the world are entering a new era of transformation in which residents and their surrounding environments are increasingly connected through rapidly-changing intelligent technologies. This transformation offers great promise for improved wellbeing and prosperity but poses significant challenges at the complex intersection of technology and society. The goal of the NSF Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) program solicitation is to accelerate the creation of the scientific and engineering foundations that will enable smart and connected communities to bring about new levels of economic opportunity and growth, safety and security, health and wellness, and overall quality of life. For the purposes of this solicitation, communities are defined as having geographically-delineated boundaries-such as towns, cities, counties, neighborhoods, community districts, rural areas, and tribal regions-consisting of various populations, with the structure and ability to engage in meaningful ways with proposed research activities. A "smart and connected community" is, in turn, defined as a community that synergistically integrates intelligent technologies with the natural and built environments, including infrastructure, to improve the social, economic, and environmental well-being of those who live, work, or travel within it.

The funding program is designed to be interdisciplinary and to facilitate projects in which there are varied dimensions to the examination of abandoned cities. At the same time, there should be a focus on causal correlations, both with regard to specific individual cultures and spanning all cultures, and on specifics of place and time. Thus far, such places have emerged for very different reasons, including military destruction, natural disasters, epidemics, environmental pollution, economic collapse, financial speculation, mobility, migration, centralization, deindustrialization, or post-colonial change, to name but a few. The aim of the program is to describe the tangible cultures of interpretation, knowledge and perception within these different contexts. Lost Cities are part of a distinct culture of memory, for example, which serves for the negotiation of identities, the preservation of knowledge cultures, the formulation of criticism of progress, or the construction of mythical or sacral topographies as part of a veritable "ruin cult". On this basis, the focus here should not be on the question of which factors led to the city's abandonment. Rather, it is the abandoned cities themselves that are of particular interest, as well as the different forms of their interpretation, instrumentalization and coding in various cultures and time frames.