Call for Applications: 2025 CUNY Adjunct Incubator Grants
Deadline
October 27, 2024
at 11:59 PM
The CUNY Adjunct Incubator supports and highlights the significant, critical and community-engaged scholarship and pedagogy work of adjuncts teaching across CUNY. Co-sponsored by the Public Scholarship Practice Space (PS2) housed at the Center for the Humanities and the Gittell Urban Studies Collective, the Adjunct Incubator aims to:
- Call public attention to adjuncts’ valuable contributions at CUNY;
- Support CUNY adjuncts and their teaching, scholarly, creative, and activist work;
- Promote their arc toward professional success and economic well-being; and
- Advocate for more paid, full-time, tenure-track positions for adjuncts to advance toward.
We will award $4,000 each to ten CUNY adjuncts developing independent scholarship and/or public projects in the humanities or humanities-related social sciences. Scholarship and/or public projects to be completed during the summer of 2025.
DEADLINE:
Sunday, October 27, 2024 by 11:59 pm
WHAT:
For this cycle, we wish to prioritize community-facing and -building work, broadly construed. Project focus might include (but not limited to): public education (especially CUNY), public health, housing, labor, liberation movements.
Our rubric for evaluation is as follows:
- Public engagement: Does this project demonstrate a deep awareness of the reciprocal methods, ethics, and goals of community-oriented practice? Does it consider the compensation of communities in which it engages, and provide a robust grasp of existing research and genealogies of its subject of study?
- Urgency: Does this project address an emergent social (environmental, health, educational, etc) need in meaningful ways?
- Creativity: Does the application think about an intellectual or practical problem through a previously unexamined perspective or with an innovative set of tools?
- Feasibility: Does the project seem manageable and are we the right organization to help the applicant fulfill their goals in a rich and nuanced way?
In addition to covering costs associated with scholarly research, this grant can support travel related to professional and/or curriculum development, and research and development of a public-facing project such as: archival research, oral histories, digital/interpretative platforms, online or print publications, performances, and panels, conferences, and exhibitions, etc. The scholarship work and/or public projects are to be completed during the summer of 2025. For examples of past grant-funded projects, visit 2021 projects here, 2020 projects here, and 2019 projects here):
ELIGIBILITY:
Current adjuncts at any CUNY College.
*Please note that if you are a current doctoral fellow at The Graduate Center, CUNY who also holds adjunct position/s, before applying, please contact the Office of Financial Aid at [email protected] to ensure that receiving this grant will not adversely impact your existing award package.
EXPECTATIONS:
- You will be in charge of managing your research or project, from conception to completion. This includes managing the budget e.g. honoraria for community participants and others, and any taxes i.e. deduct 33%
- We request a blog post about your project and a brief, one-page, narrative report on research progress and impact by September 12, 2025.
- We invite recipients to think about sharing their work with wider publics and welcome proposals for public panels or online events related to your work.
APPLICATION:
Fill out the application form, and upload as a single PDF file to the form (name your file as follows LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME_CAI2025):
- a one-page letter of interest (which can include a description of your research or public project, a timeline, and your methodological tool-kit),
- CV,
- a brief, budgetary outline
Questions? Please reach out to us [email protected]
SELECTION PROCESS:
Recipients will be decided by an interdisciplinary advisory committee. The 2025 CUNY Adjunct Incubator Advisory Committee is comprised of Celina Su, Dasharah Green, Kendra Sullivan, Mary N. Taylor, Prithi Kanakamedala, and Ujju Aggarwal.
For any queries, reach out to Prithi, PS2 faculty coordinator [email protected]
The CUNY Adjunct Incubator is co-sponsored by PS2 at the Center for the Humanities through generous grants from the Sylvia Klatzkin Steinig Fund and the Gittell Urban Studies Collective at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
About the Gittell Urban Studies Collective: The Gittell Urban Studies Collective engages communities, fellow scholars, and activists focused on issues related to cities, social justice, community participation and development, political engagement and social movements, and democratic governance, both domestically and abroad. Read more here
About the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center encourages collaborative, creative, and engaged work in the humanities and social sciences. While providing students, faculty, and community partners with grants, fellowships, and professional support, we also produce innovative projects and programs, digital and print publications, and infrastructure for public scholarship from a justice-forward framework at CUNY and across NYC. Read more here.