OARS funding Sociology

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 broader university-wide diversity and inclusion efforts, the Office of the President and the Office for the Advancement of Research and Scholarship (OARS) have issued a special call for proposals to conduct research, scholarship, or creative activities in the areas of social justice, human rights, diversity, and inclusion. Proposals may be submitted in any of these areas, but must address a scholarly question that will lead to testable objectives or measurable outcomes.

There are no limitations on the disciplinary background of the principal investigator, and the proposed research may address any topic in behavioral economics. However, projects must contribute to the Foundation's mission to improve the social and living conditions in the U.S. Appropriate projects will demonstrate explicit use of psychological concepts in the motivation of the research design and the preparation of the results.

The special programme "Islam, the Modern Nation State and Transnational Movements" is aimed at researchers who, with an eye to current developments, are examining the emergence of political movements in the Islamic world at the national and/or transnational level. Historical studies are encouraged and supported, together with projects in the areas of religious, cultural or political science: What emancipatory, what modern elements does political Islam promise and integrate? What developments, what connections, what similarities in the key categories, interpretations and claims are to be drawn between pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism at the close of the 19th century and the movements of today? What historical self-descriptions are recognizable in the concepts? Via what specific ideas of communalisation can social radicalisation and mobilisation for violence be legitimised? The special programme takes a look at the dynamics between Islamic teachings, Islamism, nationalism and transnational orientations and environments. Scientific discussion of the countries and regions of the Islamic world should bring together expertise possessing regional and thematic focus in order to allow the problems associated with areas of conflict to be expounded upon, particularly with regard to global influences and processes of cultural exchange. Proposals will be supported that address the particularities and contexts of cultural and historical environments and relationships. The projects' deliverables should be able to make a contribution to diverse and expert discussions in public and political circles. Applications are invited for funding research scholarships and research projects. PhD scholarships are only granted in connection with a research project.

Miami faculty should notify Associate Provost Jim Oris of their interest in the following RFP. ---------- CGS invites doctoral-granting member institutions to apply to participate in Understanding PhD Career Pathways for Program Improvement, a multi-institution effort to collect and use data on PhD career pathways, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation (NSF #1661272). This is an important opportunity to deepen your institution's understanding of the career goals and outcomes of its PhDs; communicate your support for the career diversity of PhDs; make evidence-based interventions that support the success of PhDs and the recruitment of future students; and access anonymized benchmarking data compiled from other project partners.   Awards: Option 1: Humanities Only. Provides awards of $30,000 each to support implementation of surveys of humanities PhD students and alumni over a period of twenty-four months. Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; 15 awards available. Please indicate in your proposal why a humanities-only project aligns with your institutional mission.   Option 2: STEM Only. Provides awards of $50,000 to each to support implementation of surveys of STEM PhD students and alumni over a period of thirty-six months. Supported by the National Science Foundation; 15 awards available. Please indicate in your proposal why a STEM-only project aligns with your institutional mission.   Option 3: Combined Proposal. If an institution meets the eligibility requirements for both the Humanities and STEM awards, CGS strongly encourages the submission of a combined proposal. Institutions selected to participate in this category will receive a total award amount of $80,000.

The goals of the Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) solicitation are to: (1) foster an interdisciplinary research community of engineers, computer and computational scientists and social and behavioral scientists, that creates new approaches and engineering solutions for the design and operation of infrastructures as processes and services; (2) enhance the understanding and design of interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICIs) and processes that provide essential goods and services despite disruptions and failures from any cause, natural, technological, or malicious; (3) create the knowledge for innovation in ICIs so that they safely, securely, and effectively expand the range of goods and services they enable; and (4) improve the effectiveness and efficiency with which they deliver existing goods and services.

The Common Fund Program - Accelerating Translation of Glycoscience: Integration and Accessibility - aims to develop accessible and affordable new tools and technologies for studying carbohydrates that will allow biomedical researchers to significantly advance our understanding of the roles of these complex molecules in health and disease. This program will enable investigators who might not otherwise conduct research in the glycosciences, to undertake the study of carbohydrate structure and function.

Through the fund's litigation program, grants of up to $25,000 will be awarded in support of public interest litigation that has the potential to benefit a large number of people, lead to significant law reform, and raise public consciousness of social justice issues. Preference is civil rights, human rights, anti-poverty, and environmental justice cases that will affect a marginalized group. Most of its grants are for class actions, but the fund also will support multi-plaintiff and environmental justice cases that aim to significantly affect a larger system. Impact Fund grants may be used for out-of-pocket litigation expenses such as expert fees and discovery costs, but not for attorney's fees, staff, or other overhead.

Founded in 1995, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is committed to providing grants in support of programs designed to broaden access to art for a diverse audience, art in the service of social justice, art in the service of social change and discourse, and underrecognized artistic practice. Through this mission, the foundation aims to foster dialogue, encourage diversity, promote education, and nurture and empower communities.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Administration for Native Americans (ANA) announces the availability of Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 funds for community-based projects for the Social and Economic Development Strategies-Alaska (SEDS-AK) program. SEDS-AK is designed to provide targeted support for Village-specific projects to improve and enhance the core capacity of Alaska Native Village governments, who are central to fulfilling social and economic self-sufficiency in Alaska. This program promotes economic and social self-sufficiency for Alaska Natives and is intended to respond to the unique governmental structures and needs in Alaska. The SEDS-AK supports the principle that social and economic development is interrelated and essential for the growth of thriving Native communities. ANA is interested in supporting community-driven projects that build and strengthen core governmental capacity in the areas of administration and project management at the Alaska Native Village level.

The Russell Sage Foundation's program on Behavioral Economics supports innovative research that uses behavioral insights from psychology and other social sciences to examine and improve social and living conditions in the United States. We seek investigator-initiated research proposals that will broaden our understanding of the social, economic and political consequences of real-life behaviors and decisions that deviate from the neoclassical economic standards of rationality. RSF is especially interested in behavioral economics research that contributes to our understanding of topics of interest under its other programs-Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity and Immigration; Social Inequality.

The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) has long had the mission to improve social and living conditions in the United States. It pursues this goal by supporting outstanding research in the social sciences that explores how social, economic, and political factors affect the lives of Americans and their children. Support of such research remains the Foundation's core focus. RSF also has a long history of encouraging new scientific advances to strengthen the methods, data, and theoretical core of the social sciences. Two recent intellectual developments have prompted RSF to launch a special research initiative that integrates knowledge from the biological and social sciences. First, there has been a paradigm shift in the life sciences, spurred by the realization that many biological processes, rather than being fixed, immutable mechanisms that consign people to particular life outcomes, are instead fluid, dynamic responses to features of the social and physical environments humans inhabit. Second, this shift led researchers to launch interdisciplinary studies that seek to integrate approaches from the social and biological sciences, recognizing the potential for a deeper understanding of how social inequalities are initiated, maintained, and transmitted from one generation to the next.

Social science research on many topics has often been hampered by the limitations of survey data. However, the digital age has rapidly increased access to large and comprehensive data sources such as public and private administrative databases, and unique new sources of information from online transactions, social-media interactions, and internet searches. New computational tools also allow for the extraction, coding, and analysis of large volumes of text. Advances in analytical methods for exploiting and analyzing data have accompanied the rise of these data. The emergence of these new data also raises questions about access, privacy and confidentiality. The Russell Sage Foundation's initiative on Computational Social Science (CSS) supports innovative social science research that brings new data and methods to bear on questions of interest in its core programs in Behavioral Economics, Future of Work, Race, Ethnicity and Immigration, and Social Inequality. Limited consideration will be given to questions that pertain to core methodologies, such as causal inference and innovations in data collection.

The Russell Sage Foundation/Kellogg Foundation's Initiative on Non-Standard Employment seeks to support innovative social science research on the causes and consequences of the increased incidence of alternative work arrangements in the United States. We define alternative work arrangements as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers. We use the terms non-standard employment and alternative work arrangements interchangeably. This initiative falls under RSF's Future of Work Program and represents a special area of interest within the core program, which continues to encourage proposals on a broader range of labor market issues. We are especially interested in novel uses of new or under-utilized data and the development of new methods for analyzing these data. Potential sources of data include the 2015 Survey of Enterprising and Informal Work Activities (EIWA) of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement (CWS) of the Current Population Survey. Proposals to conduct field experiments, in-depth qualitative interviews, and ethnographies are also encouraged. Smaller projects might consist of exploratory fieldwork, a pilot study, or the analysis of existing data. RSF encourages methodological variety and inter-disciplinary collaboration. The foundation will consider proposals for cross-national research that has clear implications for the U.S. labor market.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows program is designed to provide a comprehensive fellowship experience at the nexus of health science, policy, and politics in Washington, D.C. The program provides an opportunity for exceptional mid-career health professionals and behavioral and social scientists with an interest in health and healthcare policy. Fellows participate in the policy process at the federal level and use that leadership experience to improve health, health care, and health policy. Exceptional candidates from academic faculties and nonprofit healthcare organizations are encouraged to apply. Applicants may have backgrounds in the disciplines of allied health professions, biomedical sciences, dentistry, economics or other social sciences, health services organization and administration, medicine, nursing, public health, social and behavioral health, or health law. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Up to six grants of a maximum of $165,000 will be made in 2018. Each fellow will receive up to $104,000 for their stay in Washington (September 1, 2018, through August 31, 2019) in salary, plus fringe benefits or a fellowship stipend.

The AccessLex Center for Legal Education Excellence, in partnership with the Association for Institutional Research, is accepting applications for its 2017 Research and Dissertation Fellows Program. The annual competition awards grants to scholars and doctoral students in support of year-long research projects. The program is designed to promote scholarship on issues related to access, affordability, and the value of legal education specifically, and graduate and professional education more broadly. Preference will be given to proposals that use regional, national, or multi-institutional datasets (although research focused on a single institution is acceptable). In addition, preference will be given to proposals that specifically address legal education; however, proposals that study access, affordability, and value of graduate and professional education more generally also are encouraged. Researchers may analyze pre-existing data or include the construction of a new dataset in their proposal. Two levels of grants are available to recipients affiliated with a non-profit U.S. postsecondary institution or relevant higher and legal education organization. 1) Research Grants: grants of up $50,000 are available to faculty, practitioners, and scholars. 2) Dissertation Grants: Grants of up to $25,000 are available to doctoral students for dissertation research and writing under the guidance of a faculty advisor.

Social connections can help us thrive. But too many people feel disconnected from society and from life, and that contributes to a host of physical, mental and emotional health problems. School children, teens, new mothers, immigrants, LGBT people, people living in remote areas, even millennials with thousands of Facebook friends, often feel excluded or like they don't belong. We want to learn about solutions that have worked in other countries to address social isolation across all ages and life stages, so that we can strengthen social connection in the United States. RWJF is looking for applicants who represent organizations from a wide range of fields and disciplines-both within and outside the health sector. We encourage proposals from both U.S.-based applicants to adapt an overseas idea, and from international applicants with ideas that could work in the United States. We encourage submissions from teams that include both U.S. and international members. We seek to attract diversity of thought, professional background, race, ethnicity, and cultural perspective in our applicant pool. Building a Culture of Health means integrating health into all aspects of society, so we encourage multisector partnerships and collaboration.

With ten thousand members and two hundred and fifty "grottos" (chapters), the National Speleological Society is the largest organization in the world focused on the exploration, study, and protection of caves and their environments. For more than seventy years, NSS has promoted safe and responsible caving practices, effective cave and karst management, speleology, and conservation. To advance this mission, NSS awards Research Grants of up to $1,500 to qualified individuals or teams for research in cave-related branches of study. This includes but is not limited to the natural sciences (e.g., cave biology, geology, paleontology, and hydrology), social sciences (e.g., archaeology), and the humanities (e.g., speleological history). Interdisciplinary proposals are encouraged. Preference will be given to projects with the potential to generate new information and insights that are suitable for submission to peer-reviewed publications. Proposals may be submitted at any time. Funding decisions are made twice annually, in January and June. Proposals should be received at least one month in advance to be considered. To be considered for January 2018 funding, applications should be received no later than December 1, 2017.

This Activity will support the purpose described in USAID/OPHE's new Project Appraisal Document (PAD), which is to ensure that Cambodians seek and receive quality health care with decreased financial hardship through more sustainable systems. The Activity will contribute to this purpose through achievement of sub-intermediate result (Sub-IR) 2.1.1 (Improved health and child protection behaviors) and, to a lesser extent, Sub-IR 2.1.3 (Improved quality of public and private sector health and social services), from the Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS): Improved health and child protection behaviors among Cambodians. The primary focus will be on improving healthy behaviors. The Activity will complement the relevant sub-purpose in the Project Appraisal Document by generating demand for quality health services.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to fund highly innovative and promising research that tests multi-level physical activity intervention programs acting on at least two levels of the socio-ecological model and designed to increase health-enhancing physical activity: 1) in persons or groups that can benefit from such activity; and 2) that could be made scalable and sustainable for broad use across the nation. This FOA provides support for up to 5 years for research planning, intervention delivery, and follow-up activities.