Social Science Research Council

The IDRF program is committed to scholarship that advances knowledge about non-U.S. cultures and societies and that is empirical and site specific (involving many kinds of fieldwork and surveys, research in archival or manuscript collections, or quantitative data collection). The program promotes research that is situated in a specific discipline and geographical region and is engaged with interdisciplinary and cross-regional perspectives. Proposals may cover all periods in history, but must address topics that have relevance to contemporary issues and debates.

The IDRF competition thus promotes a range of approaches and research designs beyond single site or single country research, including comparative work at the national and regional levels (that may in some cases rely on secondary literature) and explicit comparison of cases across time frames. The program is open to proposals informed by a range of methodologies in the humanities and social sciences, both quantitative and qualitative, that seek to answer research questions through sustained empirical, site-specific and source-driven investigations. The IDRF program will not support study at foreign universities, conference participation, short research trips abroad or projects relying primarily on labwork.

Applicants are expected to write in clear, intelligible prose for a selection committee that is multi-disciplinary and cross-regional. Proposals should display a thorough knowledge of the major concepts,theories, and methods in the applicant's discipline and in other related fields as well as a bibliography relevant to the research. Applicants should specify why an extended period of  on-site research is critical for successful completion of the proposed doctoral dissertation. The research design of proposals should be realistic in scope, clearly formulated, and responsive to theoretical and methodological concerns. Applicants should provide evidence of having attained an appropriate level of training to undertake the proposed research, including evidence of a degree of language fluency sufficient to complete the project.

Photo Credits (from top): Street play, India (Manjusha Nair); Umemulo ceremony, South Africa (Elizabeth Perrill); Fiesta musicians, Mexico (David Fitzgerald);  Matwari in Lamu, Kenya (Andrew Eisenberg)