Social Science Research Council

Eligibility and Selection Criteria

I am up for tenure but will not hear definitively until the end of the academic year. Am I eligible for a research directorship?

No. At the time of their application, prospective faculty must be tenured at a doctoral degree-granting U.S. institution.

My colleague and I are at the same university.  Are we eligible to apply as research directors?

No. DPDF research directorships must be held by two tenured faculty members at different doctoral degree-granting U.S. institutions, unless your colleague and you are at the same public university but are affiliated at different campuses.

My colleague and I are at the same public university but work at different campuses. Are we eligible to apply as research directors?

Yes. As long as you are not affiliated at the same campus, you may apply.

How critical is it that the two faculty advisors be situated in two different disciplines? How important is the emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to a field? Are we eligible to apply as research directors if we both work within the same discipline?

DPDF encourages applicant teams who are either trained or practicing within two different disciplines. The program’s mission, and that of the SSRC, is to encourage interdisciplinary research. The Council and the program have received particularly positive reactions from fellows whose team of research directors was able to expose them to more than one disciplinary perspective. Research directors in the same discipline are not automatically disqualified from applying, especially if their approaches cover different methodological, regional, or historical frameworks.

Workshops and Time Commitment

Because of professional obligations, I cannot attend both workshops. Am I thereby excluded from applying for a research directorship?

Yes. Participation in both workshops is mandatory for research directors and for student fellows.

Where are the workshops held? Am I / my campus responsible for hosting the workshops?

The workshops are organized by SSRC staff and are held in reasonably central locations in the continental United States. The dates are established before the annual cycle of faculty applications.

2009 Cycle:
Spring Workshop: May 28 – 31, 2009 (location TBA).
Fall Workshop: September 10 – 13, 2009 (location TBA).

So, all I have to do is to run a workshop in the Spring and a workshop in the Fall?

No!! The DPDF program requires a year long commitment of research directors to planning, preparing, and implementing the workshops, following a set of rigid deadlines in the spring and summer. Research directors are closely involved in the selection process of their 12 student fellows. They establish workshop agendas, reading lists, assignments, and exercises that work to both assist individual students in their projects and help to build and map a research field. DPDF research directors must demonstrate a strong commitment to graduate training in general and to the individual students in their research field before, during, and after their summer predissertation field research. 

What am I expected to accomplish as a research director in charge of the workshops? 

The goal of the workshops is two fold: on the one hand, you will be expected to give individual attention to each student while organizing their conversations in productive ways. On the other hand, you will be engaged in a field-building exercise, working with a dozen heterogeneous projects in the field that you have identified to develop innovative objects and approaches in the social sciences and humanities.

All workshop activities, including guests and special events, must be discussed and approved by SSRC staff.

Can I invite another colleague from outside the U.S. to be a research director?

The DPDF is funded to support graduate education in the social sciences and the humanities at U.S. institutions. Research directors based outside the U.S., including Canada and Mexico, are at this time excluded.  It may be possible, however, for two research directors to include international collaboration of a foreign faculty member and students under certain conditions, including additional funding.

I am confused about the nature of the “research field” and the specific kinds of fields that are being targeted in the DPDF program.  Can you explain?

A research field refers to subdisciplinary and interdisciplinary domains with common intellectual questions and styles of research. These might come out of emergent fields; fields could be constituted around geographic regions not traditionally mapped by current funding structures, or they might emerge from novel ways of encouraging comparative and interdisciplinary work. Research fields can be topical in focus, transnational in scope, or comparative. Past research fields include: Black Atlantic Studies, Rethinking Europe: Religion, Ethnicity, Nation, Political Economy of Redistribution, Visual Culture, and Water Sustainability: Society, Politics, Culture. Examples of research fields, with full descriptions, can be found on this website. In thinking about the notion of “field,” it helps sometimes to consider if the word “study” can be added to a title, which suggests the likelihood that the project is not simply a research problem, but in fact a field of inquiry. For more information, please contact the DPDF Program Officer.

Application

I submitted an application through the SSRC Online Application Portal for the 2008 DPDF cycle. I was not awarded a directorship and would like to reapply. Can I reactivate my previous application as my proposal? Or, do I need to submit an entirely new proposal?

You cannot reactivate your previous application but must instead follow the protocol established for the 2009 cycle.  If you would like to discuss your previous application(s), please contact the DPDF Program Officer.

May I submit two different proposals, written with two different co-applicants, for the 2009 DPDF faculty application cycle?

No. You can only apply for a Research Directorship in one field in any given cycle.