Proposal Preparation

Copyright 2023 Academic Research Funding Strategies (ARFS). All rights reserved.

By Katherine E. Kelly, Ph.D.

At the very heart of any humanities or humanities-related social science proposal is a series of statements in which authors declare their relationship to one or more theoretical positions and explain the significance of their findings.  Without a clear statement clarifying both of these items, a proposal has little chance of success, and yet many proposals founder by poorly explaining or ignoring these narrative requirements.

As we all recognize, every work of scholarship is inhabited by theoretical assumptions, whether or not those are uppermost in the proposer’s mind as she writes her request for funding.  In the cooperative enterprise of research, writers build upon one another’s discoveries through an additive process (extending the implications of a theory by applying it to new examples), a corrective process (offering revisions to the implications of a theory by applying them to new data), or a subtractive process (demonstrating the falseness or inadequacy of a theory to explain a set of significant data).  In each case, the researcher, whether explicitly or implicitly, demonstrates his relation to one or more theoretical ideas.

This intellectual core of a proposal must be written clearly for the non-specialist and it must show an awareness of the major current theoretical innovations in the author’s field. In his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, Edward Said explains his departure from the “humanism” of Eric Auerbach’s 1946 Mimesis: “(T)he great book he wrote was an elegy for a period when people could interpret texts philologically, concretely, . . . and intuitively, using erudition and an excellent command of several languages to support the kind of understanding that Goethe advocated.”

Instead of reading texts under the banner of the older humanism, destroyed by World War II and fragmented by the internet, new humanists must read texts as works “that were produced and live on in the historical realm in all sorts of . . . ways” including “power, since . . . what I have tried to show in my book have been the insinuations, the imbrications of power into even the most recondite of studies.”  Said here echoes Foucault’s concept of power as dispersed and implicated in knowledge, a theoretical idea underlying his book’s argument.

A second, more implicit, example is drawn from an NEH proposal to study the Creole Circus in Uruguay and Argentina, c. 1860-1910: “My book project expands on previous scholarship by: (1) tracing the routes of circus troupes and their dramas as they traveled from the countryside to the city; (2) highlighting the reception of Creole dramas . . . to understand the social composition of audiences; and (3) providing an overarching framework for understanding how the Creole circus bridged popular and elite classes, practices, and literary traditions.”

By implication, this study will draw upon theories related to performance and audience reception.   A third example from an NEH proposal also implicitly stakes out two or three theories related to diaspora, imperialism, and colonialism: “By centering my analysis on one regional cohort, as opposed to focusing on the state, and by using a river system rather than provincial boundaries as my geographical scope, I bring a new perspective to the recent historical scholarship on the frontier in Ming and especially Qing times. My work also adds to recent scholarship on translocal linkages in late imperial China. Rather than exploring how the local was incorporated with the center, I show how one diasporic elite in pursuing its own socioeconomic interests, though often in the name of the state, linked local places horizontally. I also show the extent to which such institutions as the ‘localized’ lineage were dependent upon migrant strategies. In addition, my analysis of Cantonese translocal practice along the West River basin both has been inspired by recent scholarship on overseas Chinese in the modern era and seeks to contribute to that scholarship.”

Each of these examples states or implies what is currently known about a subject, then promises to revise that knowledge by adding to it, correcting it, or discounting it in some way.  In cases where a proposal guideline is not provided by a potential funder, the applicant is advised to include a clear statement describing the proposal’s relationship to the current field of knowledge on that topic.  The author should signal to the proposal reviewers which part, if any, of the current state of knowledge in the field is being revised through expansion or subtraction.

Typical ways to send this signal include phrases such as, “While recent scholarship has focused on (fill in the blank) , this study will change that focus by (fill in the blank.)  It’s best to be explicit and clear about the theories being used in the proposal.  Short proposals (+/- 5 pages) may imply such theories but longer proposals should identify them explicitly, including how each will be used to advance the proposer’s argument.  In sum, the theoretical orientation and significance sections of a proposal should receive the proposer’s close attention.  They carry the major intellectual weight of the proposal.

Copyright 2023 Academic Research Funding Strategies (ARFS). All rights reserved.

By Katherine E. Kelly, Ph.D.

One of the most challenging criteria used to rank the merits of a humanities (or any) proposal is the first one mentioned by most funders: what is its intellectual significance?  In other words, why should reviewers favor your proposal for funding over the dozens of additional meritorious proposals before them?

It often seems to those of us in the humanistic disciplines that science and technology projects are given nearly a free pass on this criterion; that is, their work is presumed to have use value. Even in the case of NSF’s funding of “pure” research, theoretical discoveries are presumed eventually to find real-world application in the broad realm of practical problem-solving. But how could poetry ever be imagined to contribute to the gross national product? How might a study of Egyptian tomb-making extend human life?  Why should it matter that a historian creates a more complete understanding of C18th geographical boundaries in the Americas?

Establishing the significance of a particular humanistic study will vary by field, but we can ask a couple of generic questions of any project to help us explain its promise to a potential funder.  (1) What are the specifics (data) of our study (verbal phrases, historical battles, political elections, theatrical performances) and do they differ from those used in prior studies?  Is there new, previously unknown or unacknowledged data?  Is it more valid data? And (2) How might the application of a theoretical model broaden the implications of our data across disciplinary fields?

In his delightful 2019 book, How to Get Grant Money in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Raphael Folsom writes, “(S)ome (modest) portion of your grant application should focus on the big ideas that guide your thinking about what you study.”  If, for example, you find yourself curious about references to painting in Virginia Woolf’s novels, you would soon find yourself reading about Woolf’s membership in the Bloomsbury Circle, which would, in turn, take you to scholarship about the Circle’s aesthetic, social, and political ideas and practices. What kind of question would you formulate to guide your further research?  You could study what made the coterie called “Bloomsbury” distinct, describing in historical detail its particular social, aesthetic, and political beliefs; or, you could study its similarities to other artistic coteries of the period, including the ideas and practices it shared with similar groups in western Europe and the U.S.

Or, more to the point, you could adopt social history as your theoretical model, combining these two emphases by accounting for the widespread forming of artistic coteries early in the twentieth-century west and revealing the uniqueness of Bloomsbury within these groups. What began as a narrow curiosity about references to visual art in Woolf’s novels ends with placing Woolf’s coterie in the context of many coteries during the same historical period. In structuring a project along these lines, the author avoids the over-specificity of historical study and the overgenerality of sociological methods, as explained by Peter Burke in his 1992 survey of theoretical models, History and Social Theory. The wider context invites an exchange of ideas with allied fields and broadens the “significance” of the proposed project.

To the end of strengthening a project’s significance, a theory developed to explain events in one historical period or geographical location may be judiciously adapted to explain them in another. Raphael Folsom describes an author adapting from David Nirenberg’s book about the Medieval world, Communities of Violence, the notion that “violence can be a useful tool for communities to employ, particularly in areas where no single . . . group has a monopoly on its use, such as borderlands.”  The author applied the concept to his study of violence in C17th-C19th Southwestern U.S. Borderlands.

Compelling statements of significance declare the purpose of the proposed project and explain how it will contribute by adding to, revising, or correcting an existing field of knowledge.  Consider this example from an NEH proposal: “My history of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. South . . . ‘recovers’ tens of thousands of immigrants . . . lost to the historical record, revealing the origins of the contemporary wave of immigration.  It also joins typically discrete subfields of U.S. history—Southern and Mexican American—and conceptualizes a transnational history of racial formation between the United States and Mexico. In so doing, the book shifts the terrain on which these historiographies rest.” New data and a new concept of transnational racial formation give this proposal an intellectual vigor, legitimacy, and excitement needed to set it apart from hundreds of like applications.

Intellectual significance does not reveal itself to reviewers.  It’s created by the carefully written claims an author makes in the first few paragraphs of a proposal. Expect to rewrite these opening statements many times to achieve the clarity and persuasiveness you will need to set your proposal apart from others.

Copyright 2023 Academic Research Funding Strategies (ARFS). All rights reserved.

By Mike Cronan

Everything you need to know about writing funded research grants is encapsulated in and motivated by how well-prepared you are to answer this iconic question–What is Your Great Idea and Why is It Important?  This question lies at the heart of every funding solicitation by every funding agency supporting research in every possible discipline.  It is such a simple question, but yet so deeply probing, that its significance is often not fully appreciated.  When it is addressed in the proposal narrative, its treatment often lacks the focus and clarity it requires to answer the “why and how questions” at its core.  Keep in mind that many proposals are poorly reviewed because they overemphasize what they are going to do and underemphasize how they will do it–both correctable errors addressed through better narrative outlines and planning, as well as better writing.

What you will do can be thought of as an inspirational or visionary introduction to your proposed project that should appear in the first narrative section that will be read by reviewers and program officers (e.g., “Our proposed research will inform future spacecraft design about the materials needed to give astronauts on a three-year Mars mission protection from two forms of radiation: solar proton events and galactic cosmic radiation.”).  However, what you propose to do must be quickly validated in the research narrative by a detailed description of how you will do it.  The former is a laudatory goal, but the latter is where the rubber meets the road; without it, the project is merely an unrealized pipe dream.

Unfortunately, a what we will do statement without a convincing how we will do it statement is commonly cited by reviewers and program officers as a reason for declining to fund a proposal.  Or, in this instance, how you will protect astronauts from cosmic radiation on the long journey to Mars is what the reviewers want to know to make an informed funding decision, not to mention the critical importance of the how statement to the astronauts making the journey.

In this regard, the beginning of your research or project narrative must address (1) why is the research significant to the field, the discipline, or the agency mission; (2) how the proposed research fits in the context of other cutting-edge work in the field, and how does it advance that research; and (3) how do you plan to accomplish your research goals and objectives. and how your research hypothesis or research questions advance the field.

Moreover, addressing the above questions is becoming increasingly challenging as federal research agencies have an expectation of transformational rather than incremental research.  Or, under the rules of the old children’s game, “Mother May I,” whereby you request permission to take some number of giant, regular, or baby steps, either forward or backward, the federal agency research “mother” (e.g., NSF, NIH, DARPA) is interested only in funding requests for giant or transformational steps forward . . . no regular or baby steps need apply.

While this advice appears straightforward, it is too often unrealized in proposal narratives, particularly in those written by new and more junior faculty.  Well-funded senior faculty would not be well-funded senior faculty if they ignored this advice.  If there is a lesson for new faculty seeking funding support to advance their research and hence promotion and tenure, this is it.  But while it is an easy lesson to learn, it is a challenging one to put into practice for several reasons.

For example, many proposal authors get out in front of their skis by drafting a proposal narrative before they’ve written a well-organized project outline based on the agency’s goals and objectives described in the funding solicitation. This outline helps the applicant offer reviewers and program offices a logical, stepwise process that describes what you will do, why you will do it, how you will do it, the significance of doing it, and the applicant’s capacity for doing it.

The common error in this example is that, without a well-considered and logically ordered narrative outline, the critical first descriptions of “what, why, how” become mixed together in a narrative hodgepodge that reviewers will struggle to understand.  In many cases, they won’t understand it because they will become quickly impatient and annoyed rather than receptive to a funding recommendation.  Writing a proposal without a guiding narrative outline often leads to text that jumps back and forth among key topics, failing to present the kind of sustained and logically ordered argument that warrants funding.

Another reason why these key questions may be challenging to answer, and one more serious and refractory to correction, is that the proposed research itself is not yet ready for prime time.  For example, it may still be in an early developmental stage, or it may be a potentially important research area without a competitive research team in place, or it may only partially address the goals and objectives of the funding solicitation and therefore fail to respond fully to the solicitation,  or the applicant may be lacking sufficient preliminary data or publications to make a strong case for funding, and so on.

The bottom line is that being prepared to answer this question–What is Your Great Idea and Why is It Important?—is a fundamental prerequisite for a funded proposal.  If you struggle with answering that question, you will have to determine the source of the struggle—is it with organizing your great idea, or is the struggle with the development of the idea itself?  In grant writing, it is not a philosophical question of “what came first the chicken or the egg”; it is always the case that a fully developed great idea comes first and the funding will follow.

The inverse of this is the scourge of reviewers and program officers alike—the “trust me proposal,” i.e., give me the money and trust me to develop a great idea. Reviewers are selected because they have unique expertise in the field; asking them to review a “trust me” proposal as if they just “fell off the turnip truck” would be a grievous miscalculation.