Humanities, arts faculty receive seed funding for innovative projects

Eight UB faculty members recently received funding for research and creative activity in the arts and humanities through a partnership between the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development (OVPRED) and the Humanities Institute (HI).

The OVPRED/HI Seed Money in the Arts and Humanities provides awardees with up to $5,000 for long-term projects with potential for generating additional outside funding.

“This kind of funding puts awardees in a position to obtain much larger grants down the road,” says Erik Seeman, director of the Humanities Institute. “There is a significant return on investment.”

Given the program’s long vision, Seeman says the selection committee looks for projects where a small infusion of cash to an artist or researcher will be enough to get them started — whether it’s doing initial research, making a trip to an archive or producing a proof-of-concept model.

“We’re looking for those projects that are innovative and interesting as defined by criteria in various fields,” he says. “Once started, this new visibility will provide that project with a better opportunity for funding from a national agency.”

The seed money represents only part of the Humanities Institute’s effort to support and promote a culture of grant writing.

Seeman says many artists and humanists are not as well oriented to grant writing as their counterparts in the physical and medical sciences.

“That’s why all of our awardees attend our annual grant-writing workshop that provides an opportunity for them to hear from an expert and share application narratives with their peers,” says Seeman. “The money is important, but the grant writing is integral to our vision.”

This is the second round of funding in the OVPRED/HI Seed Money in the Arts and Humanities. Faculty members receiving up to $5,000 are:

• Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, associate professor, Department of Anthropology: “Forging the Human: Civic Engagement and the Re-sacralization of Space in Northern Peru.”
• Irus Braverman, professor, UB Law School: “Governing Coral: The Emergence of Lively Oceanic Legalities.”
• Erin Hatton, associate professor, Department of Sociology: “Between Work and Slavery: Coerced Labor in Contemporary America.”
• Lindsay Hunter, assistant professor, Department of Theatre and Dance: “Too Solid Flesh: Disembodied Hamlets and Digital Theatricality.”
• Nicholas Lustig, assistant professor, Department of Geography: “Variegated Mobilities of Real-Time Crime Centers: The Uneven Spread of High-Tech Policing in U.S. Cities.”
• Ruth Mack, associate professor, Department of English: “Habitual Knowledge: Theory and the Everyday in Enlightenment Britain.”
• Mark Shepard, associate professor, departments of Architecture and Media Study: “False Positive (on the null hypothesis).”
• Henry Louis Taylor Jr., professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning: “East Side History Project.”

Abstracts for the funded projects can be found on the Humanities Institute’s website.