Seed Grant Funding – Digital Humanities

Previously Funded Projects

Funded Projects 2024

Funded Projects 2023

Funded Projects 2022

Call for Proposals 2025

Application deadline: Noon, Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Funding awards up to $2,000

DH@MSU invites proposals for seed grants to support digital humanities projects in research, teaching, and public outreach, in any humanistic or related discipline of the university during Summer 2025. DH@MSU summer seed grants are designed to support projects that might include

Textual analysis: digital editions; websites that invite linguistic, social, and historical analysis of texts; text aggregation sites.
Development of tools for digital analysis.
Geospatial approaches to texts and historical problems.
Network analysis of texts and historical problems.
Data-mining of corpora for insights into genres, discourses, and the sociology of knowledge.
Digital projects whose aim is primarily pedagogical, often undertaken with civic or public humanities goals in mind.
Humanistic studies of new media, science or technology.

Applicants may be tenured or tenure-track faculty, non-tenure track faculty, specialists, staff, and/or graduate students. If the applicant(s) are faculty/specialists/staff, at least one member of the project team must be Core or Affiliated faculty with DH@MSU. Graduate student applications are encouraged from students in the DH Certificate, but formal affiliation with the program is not required.

We will prioritize applications for prototypes that will lead to larger projects, for projects that demonstrate collaboration across units, and for projects that make use of existing infrastructure and resources available.

A detailed budget is required for all applications. Awards may be used for funds that will be spent during the period of the grant:

costs associated with conducting or disseminating research;
purchasing technology (limited to a maximum of 30% of total budget);
hiring specialized technical development (programming, etc.) as consultants;
hiring student workers as project members (recommended pay for undergraduate student workers is $15/hour and for graduate students, $20/hour)
Up to 50% of funds may be used to compensate non-student MSU employees for work on the project

Application Package and Process

Applications must include:

a Project Narrative of no more than 1,000 words. The narrative should describe the guiding premises of the project clearly, provide a clear overview of the project’s structure (components, personnel, tasks), and describe in concrete terms what the project hopes to accomplish by the end of the summer. The Project Narrative should also address how the project uses digital humanities methods to further its research aims.
a separate, detailed budget, with clear explanations for each item and a justification of their importance to the project.
a separate timetable that outlines the expected stages of the work and a date of completion.
a roster of members of the project team, their titles and roles on the project. For any team members that will be hired into the team, include a description of their role and note that they will be hired.

Applications should take the form of a Google Doc, Word file, or a PDF containing the primary applicant’s last name in the filename. Applications should be submitted to dh@msu.edu by Noon on Wednesday, March 19, 2025.

Summer Support & Report on Outcomes

During the summer, DH@MSU will hold 3 touch base meetings for Seed Grant Recipients, and all funding recipients are strongly encouraged to attend. The first meeting will take place in mid-May to launch the funding program, with a mid-summer follow up, and a final meeting at the end of summer. These meetings will encourage funding recipients to share expertise across projects and serve as an opportunity for DH@MSU to provide support for the projects throughout the funding period.
All funded applicants must submit a report of 1,500 words by October 3, 2025, to be posted on the digitalhumanities.msu.edu website, describing the outcomes of their project.
Members of the project team will present their work as part of the DH@MSU Research Showcase in the Fall 2025 semester.

Past Projects