Call for Grant Proposals
Forthcoming: 2025 - 2026 Call for Grant Proposals
The UB Communities of Care project seeks proposals from UB faculty for individual or group seed grants for research. These grants are meant to provide individuals or groups with the funds to formulate or pilot humanities-based research related to the themes of the Mellon “Communities of Care” project. Applicants may define “community” and “care” broadly. We are especially interested in work that explores the intersections of care, community, race, disability (which may include mental health and chronic illness), gender, and sexuality. Ideally, these seed grants will enable recipients to apply for external funding to continue their work.
Communities of Care Grant Proposals
AY 2025-2026
Individual Seed Grant – up to $15,000
In the Communities of Care project, we focus on communities of care in Buffalo to think with study participants about the everyday ways that those impacted by disability, both caregivers and those receiving care, including poor, racialized, and disabled people, navigate and negotiate living, working, and accessing vital healthcare and other needs .
We use “communities of care” to extend our understanding of care networks beyond formalized healthcare settings to include the vital care that takes place in the home, in neighborhoods, and in other settings. We also consider care as work – both in its more formal settings and in the informal spaces in which it most often occurs.
We are exploring the ways in which this work has been/is gendered and racialized and the implications that this has for the formation of caregiving/receiving relationships and worker organizing.
We are creating a permanent digital archive and exhibition space made available to community members, students, and researchers of all levels. We are bringing together community people, artists, and scholars involved in giving and receiving care to share their stories through interviews, creative writing, memoir, and art making, as well as other approaches that interact with the “communities of care” theme.
The Communities of Care project amplifies the voices of those whose stories are not often heard, both the caregivers and those receiving care; and will focus on the intersection of disability, race, and gender.
Grants can be used for collection of pilot data or other data collection, archival research, fieldwork, research assistance, supplies, books, software, travel integral to the development of the project, course release, and other forms of research support allowable under UB guidelines.
To apply, please submit a CV, a proposal narrative with project title, summary of your project, anticipated project outcomes, and a timeline for completion of the work (maximum two single-spaced pages), and a detailed budget of planned expenditures to Laurel Payne, laurelpa@buffalo.edu. Proposals should be written in a way that make them legible to non-specialists. Proposals will be evaluated by an independent ad hoc committee.
The amount awarded will be based on the project proposed and the detailed budget, within the constraints of our budget.
Deadline to submit proposals: May 31, 2025
Notification of award recipient(s): June 30, 2025
Award recipients should begin their work July 1, 2025 and complete it by June 30, 2026. Recipients will be expected to submit a one-page summary of their research or research update within a year of receiving the funds, including a description of how the award helped the recipient(s) pursue their research goals. . A short report of the work will be posted on our website.
Please direct all inquiries to Laurel Payne, laurelpa@buffalo.edu.