Please check back regularly to learn of new funding opportunities from federal agencies, and foundations dedicated to social science research. Internal (BU) funding sources are provided on the Faculty Opportunities page. If you would like to announce a funding opportunity, please share with CISS using the Contact form here.
BU’s Successful Proposal Library – Consider donating your own successful proposal to the library.
Society for the History of Technology Brooke Hindle Postdoctoral Fellowship
Posted 02/25/25
Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs
MIT Solve Challenges 2025 Challenges
Purpose: To find and scale the best ideas to the most intractable issues of our time though open innovation challenges seeking technology-based solutions. The following challenges are currently open:
Indigenous Communities Fellowship: supporting community-based solutions by and for Indigenous communities across the USA and Canada with a particular interest in:
Global Economic Prosperity Challenge: supporting exceptional technology-driven solutions to increase economic prosperity for all, with focus on:
🗓️ Application Deadline: April 17, 2025 (application deadline, except for Trinity Challenge)
Funding:
$10,000 prize plus up to $200,000 in additional funding (except for Trinity Challenge)
Trinity Challenge: Community Access to Effective Antibiotics: seeking to use data and technology to improve stock control and/or reduce the use of substandard and falsified oral antibiotics for community use in low- and middle-income countries.
Funding: Up to £500,000 over 2 years
🗓️ Application Deadline Trinity Challenge: April 24, 2025 (application deadline)
Posted 03/3/25
Burroughs Wellcome Fund Climate Change & Human Health Seed Grants
Purpose: To support new collaborations between researchers in disconnected fields, especially activities that integrate basic biomedical science with fields like ecology, environmental science, geology, geography, and planetary science, alongside population studies such as epidemiology, public health, demography, economics, and urban planning. The program encourages:
(i) the development of sustainable health care, care delivery, and biomedical research systems and
(ii) efforts to prepare for health impacts from extreme weather and other large-scale crises.
Public outreach and education on climate-health intersections are also of interest.
Eligibility: Applicant organizations may submit multiple proposals, but an individual may only serve as a PI on 1 application. Proposals from single institutions must develop partnerships that do not already occur naturally. Proposals from more than one institution are responsive.
Funding: up to $50,000, no IDC
The funder has dedicated $1 million towards this program.
🗓️ Application Deadline: April 24, 2025, Rolling applications will be reviewed quarterly through July 2026.
Keywords: Climate Change; Health; Medical Research
Posted 12/17/24
Purpose: To recognize outstanding efforts enhancing research across natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, fostering research quality awareness. Contributions should align with the following: (i) Reproducibility & research quality, (ii) MetaScience (Research on Research), (iii) Identifying research standards and incentives, and (iv) Increasing diversity in research. The funder makes three awards:
🗓️ Application Deadline: April 30, 2025 (submission deadline) , November 2025 (award announcement)
Retirement Research Foundation Research Grants
Gerda Henkel Stiftung Forced Migration To support internationally oriented, multidimensional research on forced migration. Proposals that incorporate intersectional perspectives and issues are highly desirable, and cooperation with local knowledge-producers, including people with lived experience of displacement in countries of origin or asylum, researchers and civil society actors (particularly in the “Global South”), is strongly encouraged. Projects should focus on theoretical and practical questions, particularly within the following research areas: (i) Forced migration infrastructures, (ii) South-South (im)mobilities, (iii) Multiple displacements, (iv) Displaced people’s agency, and (iv) (Supra-)state influences on displacement processes.
Funding: up to $96,000 stipend over 2 years, no IDC.
· Faculty Awards: €3,720 ($4,000)/month
· Postdoctoral Awards: €2,760 ($3,000)/month
· PhD Awards: €1,920 ($2,000)/month
Additional funding is available for children and additional travel and material aid provided as needed.
🗓️ Application Deadline: May 5, 2025
Posted 12/6/24
William T Grant Research Grants on Improving the Use of Research Evidence This program funds research studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, and other decision-makers that shape youth-serving systems in the United States.
🗓️ Application Deadline: May 7, 2025
Info Webinar:
An Overview of the Program and How to Apply: We welcome studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. We also encourage evaluations of deliberate efforts to increase routine and beneficial uses of research in decision-making and testing whether strategies that improve the use of research evidence in turn improve decision-making and youth outcomes. We are also interested in measurement studies to develop the tools necessary to capture changes in the nature and degree of research use. Finally, we welcome critical perspectives that inform studies’ research questions, methods, and interpretation of findings.
Posted 12/2/24
Gerda Henkel Stiftung General Research Grants
Purpose: To support research projects within the fields of archaeology, history of art, historical Islamic studies, history, history of law, history of science, prehistory, and early history.
Eligibility: Applications may be made by postdoctoral candidates or scholars with postdoctoral lecture qualification. Postdoctoral researchers must have received their PhD within the last 10 years. Dissertation must have already been published at the time the application is made, and the topic of the proposed research project must clearly differ from the topic of the PhD thesis. Any prior Gerda Henkel Foundation must have been granted at least 5 years earlier.
Funding: up to $96,000 stipend over 2 years, no IDC.
· Faculty Awards: €3,720 ($4,000)/month
· Postdoctoral Awards: €2,760 ($3,000)/month
Additional funding is available for children and additional travel and material aid provided as needed.
🗓️ Application Deadline: May 26, 2025
Posted 12/6/24
ARI Releases BAA for Behavioral and Social Sciences
The Foundational Science Research Unit (FSRU) within the United States Army Research Institute (ARI) for Behavioral and Social Sciences released its fiscal year (FY) 2026 broad agency announcement (BAA) seeking proposals for its Basic Research program. The mission of the ARI’s basic research program is to “execute high-risk, high-reward foundational research to develop state-of-the-art theory, methods, and models to create the innovative concepts required to support the Army’s future capabilities and needs related to personnel readiness.” This BAA seeks proposals that will contribute to theory along with benefits to the Army.
The Basic Research Program focuses on four broad research domains:
ARI requests that proposals focus on novel, state-of-the-art, and multidisciplinary approaches in the behavioral and social sciences. Proposals for this BAA must also align with and provide a scientific foundation for these broad capabilities. Each research domain has strategic objectives, high-priority research questions, and technical points of contact, which can be found in the BAA. ARI will not support proposals that focus on applied research projects, including human factors studies, or proposals focused on physiology, psychopathology, or behavioral health.
This BAA will accept three types of proposals: Standard Basic Research Proposals; Targeted Opportunities, which include Early Career Proposals (ECP); and Short-Term Innovative Research (STIR) Proposals. ARI encourages all proposals to emphasize multidisciplinary approaches that “creatively address the research problem.”
Total Funding and Award Size: This solicitation has no award floor or ceiling; ARI intends to award 100 proposals.
Eligibility: This BAA is open to institutions of higher education, non-profit organizations, and commercial entities, both foreign and domestic. Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (FFRDCs) are not permitted to respond to this solicitation. This solicitation encourages collaboration among eligible applicants.
🗓️ Application Deadline: full proposals are due by 5:00 PM ET on July 1, 2025.
Sources and Additional Background:
Posted 2/10/25
The online application is now open.
🗓️ Application Deadline: July 1, 2025, 3:00pm ET
Posted 3/27/25
Purpose: To support interdisciplinary collaboration between humanities and social sciences researchers and practitioners to address societal challenges within social sustainability, environmental sustainability, and transitions in adult life. Projects must focus on one of the following:
· social sustainability for people in a socially vulnerable position among children, young people or adults and lift these citizens’ voices and power to act towards greater participation in society’s communities and democratic society;
· sustainable solutions within society’s major nature, biodiversity, climate and pollution challenges on land and at sea, seen from a life cycle perspective; OR
· participation barriers and opportunities for adults over 50 years of age in relation to enabling adults to increase or maintain their agency, cope with everyday challenges and thus become better able to contribute to the community .
Eligibility: Proposals must be in Danish.
Funding: 5.9 million DKK ($850,000) over up to 5 years.
Projects invited for a full proposal receive DKK 100,000 ($14,450) in project development funds.
Key Dates:
April 22, 2025 (online information sessions)
August, 14 2025 (expression of interest, project budget, and short CV Deadline)
October 2025 (full proposal invitation)
February 26, 2026 (full proposal deadline)
Keywords: Children & Youth, Democracy, Environmental Engineering, Humanities, Psychology, Public Health, Social Sciences, Sustainability, Early Career, Mid-Career
Posted 4/3/25
NEW Fulbright Canada Awards for the 2026/2027 academic year are open for applications! As a U.S. scholar, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to explore and apply for one of the available awards. Additionally, we encourage you to share this exciting news with your network of scholars, colleagues, and anyone who might be interested. These highly sought-after awards are designed for U.S. scholars who are passionate about conducting research or teaching in Canada.
These highly sought-after awards are designed for U.S. scholars who are passionate about conducting research or teaching in Canada.
🗓️Application Deadline: September 15, 2025.
Posted 04/9/25
NEW William T Grant Institutional Challenge Grant The Institutional Challenge Grant supports university-based research institutes, schools, and centers in building sustained research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations in order to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. The grant requires that research institutions shift their policies and practices to value collaborative research. Institutions will also need to build the capacity of researchers to produce relevant work and the capacity of agency and nonprofit partners to use research.
We welcome applications from partnerships in youth-serving areas such as education, justice, prevention of child abuse and neglect, foster care, mental health, immigration, and workforce development. We especially encourage proposals from teams with African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian American members in leadership roles. The partnership leadership team includes the principal investigator from the research institution and the lead from the public agency or nonprofit organization.
The Institutional Challenge Grant asks grantees to pursue four goals:
Funding: The award will provide $650,000 over three years.
🗓️ Application Deadline: May 7, 2025
Posted 4/18/25
The Diversity & Inclusion Rapid Innovation Initiative Fund is an endowed fund designed to provide support for projects that will advance diversity, equity, and inclusion at the College of Arts & Sciences, specifically by providing the CAS Dean with the means to propel and accelerate curriculum innovation; expand access to experiential learning activities, student-led forums and events; and help fund faculty outreach and recruitment.
The Virginia Sapiro Academic Enhancement Fund (AEF) enables CAS faculty members to build experiential learning (EL) into undergraduate CAS courses, using historic and contemporary Boston as an extended classroom and taking advantage of the city and University as magnets for leading academics, artists, industry professionals, and experts in diverse subject areas.
The activities supported by the fund will complement or enrich students’ experience in your course, giving them the opportunity to apply material from class and to learn by doing.
Award amounts are typically determined by course enrollment and capped at $45 per student. Current fund levels allow the AEF to support EL activities for approximately 200 students each semester (across multiple courses, if applicable). As of Fall 2024, faculty members receiving awards will be asked to have their students complete a short reflection on their experiential learning activity.
Funding is reserved for new or pilot EL initiatives; activities that are a required part of the curriculum and those integral to the course design will not be supported. AEF funds are intended for one-time purposes only. (Requests for recurring funding should be made as part of the annual budget submission process. Please work with administrators in your department or program to prepare the request.) View a list of activities previously funded by the AEF.
GeoCAFÉ! We are excited to introduce GeoCAFÉ, a new NSF-funded RCN seeking to accelerate the pace climate and health research by fostering greater collaboration between those who understand and focus on studying the environment from where the triggers of many climate-related health issues arise and experts who study the impact and treatment of health conditions driven by those triggers.
As a starting point, we’re now accepting applications from researchers at US academic institutions interested in being part of our first GeoCAFÉ climate and health cohort. Cohort members drawn from the health and geosciences will participate in a series of virtual and in-person events over the next 12 months.
Fulbright Canada Entrepreneurship Awards for Specialists are short-term collaborations on curriculum and faculty development, institutional planning and a variety of other activities at Canadian institutions. Specialists receive the necessary resources to transform innovative ideas into successful entrepreneurial endeavours.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Applications are accepted throughout the year.
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Bogliasco Foundation The Foundation welcomes applications from individuals doing creative or scholarly work in the following disciplines: archaeology, architecture, classics, dance, film/video, history, landscape architecture, literature, music, philosophy, theater, and visual arts. The Foundation awards approximately 60 Fellowships each year in seven residency periods that run from September through May.
An American nonprofit with a program in Italy, the Bogliasco Foundation awards one-month Fellowships to individuals of all ages and nationalities who are developing significant new work in the arts and humanities. Fellows live and work in bucolic surroundings on the coast near Genoa, where natural beauty combines with an intimate group setting to encourage inquiry and transformative exchange across all disciplines.
Apply: https://bfny.org/en/apply
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling
Collaborative Research Proposals in Sociology as part of the NSF-BSF in Sociology is open to receive applications anytime throughout the year. As part of the NSF-BSF joint program, the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) invites collaborative research proposals in Sociology, in the Social, Behavioral and Economics Sciences (SBE) Directorate at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Call for Proposals can be found here.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Applications are welcomed throughout the year.
Teagle Foundation Program: Education for American Civic Life The program supports efforts to prepare students to become informed and engaged participants in the civic life of their local and national communities. The funder seeks to elevate the civic objectives of liberal arts education by partnering with institutions offering bold and coherent initiatives that endow students with the content, skills, and sensibility to participate in a political system designed for self-governance. The program is focused on funding in two particular areas: (1) anchoring significant questions in democratic thought in local history and community and (2) strengthening preparation for public service.
Funding: up to $300,000 over up to 3 years
Proposals for planning grants in the range of $25,000 over 6-12 months are strongly encouraged.
🗓️ Application Deadlines: Concept papers for this initiative will be reviewed three times per year with submissions due by December 1, March 1, and August 1.
The Fulbright Specialist Award is designed to provide U.S. and Canadian faculty and professionals with opportunities to collaborate on curriculum and faculty development, institutional planning, and a variety of other activities. Short-term grants of two to six weeks are available to provide leading U.S. scholars and professionals with opportunities to collaborate with their Canadian counterparts.
HOW TO APPLY: American scholars and professionals interested in joining the roster of Fulbright Specialists are advised to contact our cooperating agency, World Learning, for detailed program information.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling
Colorado specific funding options:
El Pomar which focuses on arts and culture, civic and community initiatives, education, health, and human services, learn more. They also offer funding via several additional funds, learn more.
Boettcher Foundation, which in 2023 is focused on community connections and their Rural Catalyst Grants, learn more.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling
Call for Collaborative Research Proposals in Sociology: NSF-BSF 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. Full proposals are accepted throughout the year in all programs.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling
Overview of Federal Funding Opportunities for Behavioral and Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities BU in collaboration with Lewis Burke Associates has produced a compendium of potential funding sources.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling
Sawyer Seminars, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer seminars bring together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields for intensive study of subjects chosen by the participants. Each seminar normally meets for one year. Seminar leaders are encouraged also to invite participants from nearby institutions, such as community colleges, liberal arts colleges, museums, research institutes, etc. Awards provide support for one postdoctoral fellow to be recruited through a national (or international) competition, and for the dissertation research of two graduate students.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling
Spencer Foundation. The Spencer Foundation, a leading funder of education research since 1971, seeks to improve education, make education systems more equitable, and increase opportunities to learn across the lifespan. The Foundation’s programs provide funding for education-focused research projects, research training fellowships, and additional field-building initiatives.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling
NIH Common Fund’s Transformative Health Disparities Research Initiative Community To stimulate transformative research to address health disparities and advance health equity, the NIH Common Fund is developing a new program planned to launch in fiscal year 2023.
Through a series of facilitated listening sessions with the community, the NIH Common Fund’s Transformative Research to Address Health Disparities and Advance Health Equity working group seeks your input on new, innovative research into health disparities, minority health, and health equity.
🗓️ Application Deadline: Rolling