Crystal Biruk: SSRC, NSF, Wenner-Gren

Crystal Biruk November 11, 2009

NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (division of social, behavioral, and economic sciences)- January 15 or August 15 deadline NSF awards up to $20,000 for research lasting up to 24 months 10 page proposal  Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant- May 1 or November 1 deadline Wenner Gren awards up to $15,000 with no time limit on the duration of research  SSRC IDRF-November 3 deadline SSRC awards up to $25,000 for 9-12 months of research 

1) A clear, compelling, and answerable research question  2) Rhetoric and organization appropriate to the proposal genre  3) Coherence of research question(s) and methods  4) Revisions/ multiple drafts 

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In one sentence, you really have to grab your readers’ attention Should always appear somewhere on the first page Easiest to introduce your question via a paradox or contradiction

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[…] While collaborative research may begin with varying interpretations across collaborators, inevitably during the research process certain interpretive explanations are taken as authoritative. My research considers how different constructions of risk are produced and communicated among various levels of international AIDS research in Malawi. How are diverse theories and perspectives of risk produced, challenged or confirmed as authoritative knowledge in the interactions among actors located within four levels of the research infrastructure in Malawi, namely: 1) local village residents 2) intermediaries (indigenous research supervisors, translators, community liaisons, research assistants) 3) Malawian collaborators (faculty at U of Malawi, top NGO staff) and 4) international (expatriate) partners?[…], from SSRC November 2006

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…This contradiction points to a question central to this particular project and to the conduct of collaborative health research more generally: In the face of contrasting and possibly discordant presuppositions concerning the central focus of research, how in collaborative projects does one (or more) of them gain legitimacy? , from Wenner Gren November 2006

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The fundamental aim of preventative AIDS research is to understand how people perceive their risk when they are living in societies where HIV prevalence is high. If this research is to provide useful evidence that can inform HIV prevention policies and programs, then we must understand how the collaborators on a research project conceptualize the risk they aim to study. Thus, the goal of my research is to examine: How are different constructions of risk produced and communicated among various levels of international AIDS research in Malawi?, from NSF, January 2007

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Know your audience! Find out as much as you can about who will be reading your proposal (SSRC, for example, posts past selection committee lists). Tone should also derive from the mission statement and orientation of the specific organization you are applying to (meaning: do not submit the same grant everywhere).

Keep it simple! Keep it accessible to an intelligent, but interdisciplinary audience. Define or omit jargon.

Organization is important (consider using headings like: problem focus, ethnographic context, theoretical foundations, research design and methods, etc…)

Don’t go overboard with the literature review- be choosy and targeted.

Act is if your research is earth shattering, not only within your own scholarly community but also to much wider audiences (e.g. in the social sciences, it is easy to refer to policy relevance, “pressing global issues,” and etc…)

Use concise, succinct sentences and revise multiple times for diction

Within the first page, you must convince the reader to keep reading. I tend to use anecdotal or ethnographic/real world stuff because it is less likely to produce boredom.

E.g. My introductory sentences for all three proposals: While working on a collaborative AIDS research project in Malawi in 2005, I was struck by the noticeable differences in how the risk of contracting AIDS was interpreted by members of the research team, despite their sharing of the same research agenda, protocols, and directives. Whereas expatriate researchers linked AIDS risk to extra-marital or pre-marital sex, local researchers viewed cultural practices such as sexual cleansing, initiation ceremonies, or ritual sex as the main conduits for HIV transmission. What this suggested to me was not simply that scientific inquiry is inherently social (Knorr-Cetina 1983; Latour 1987; Longino 2002), but rather how collaborative research is inevitably paradoxical‌

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The Significance section is much more important than you think and should always show how the answers to your research question(s) will be useful to your discipline, other disciplines, and the real world.

Example (from my NSF, 2006): The AIDS epidemic will continue to impact social lives, economies,

and global health. This multi-sited and mixed methods study of collaborative AIDS research in Malawi offers a new approach to understanding “local� ideas about AIDS risk and the epidemic. Although the concept and the practice of collaborative health research have gained recent prominence, few studies have considered the research project as a salient site in which to explore the politics of knowledge production. In sub-Saharan Africa, an emphasis on collaborative research has brought changes in the structural organization and practice of research. Though expert knowledge and expertise are now assumed to be contested and negotiated instead of simply imposed, my previous research suggests that this is unlikely to be the whole story. Moreover, the potential for collaborative research to actually produce better and more useful knowledge is, at the moment, taken for granted. This assumption should be critically interrogated precisely because of the potential ramifications it has upon health in sub-Saharan Africa. While much recent ethnographic work takes into account how global ideas are translated into local contexts, few have focused on the practices and processes that combine expert and local knowledge and actors, and I know of none that have done this in the context of research collaborations in a developing country. Understanding the politics of knowledge production and the content and organization of the competing risk interpretations of individual actors is urgent as collaborative research projects become the main vehicle not only for authoritative interpretations of the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in other areas of the world. Knowledge produced by these projects is the product of encounters between members of many different social worlds: this research will provide valuable insights about how we come to know what we think we know about AIDS in Africa.

From the NSF Cultural Anthropology grant guidelines: “Successful proposals are characterized by clear research questions and propositions that will be put to the test through meticulous attention to research design, data collection, and analysis.”

So, you must show your readers: 1) That fieldwork (or whatever kind of research) is crucial in order to answer your question(s) 2) That you have devised sub-questions and methods that will generate exactly the data you need to answer your main research question 3) How exactly this data will allow you to answer the question(s) you’ve posed

From my SSRC, 2006: Q2: How do actors communicate information and perspectives about risk, risk groups and risky behavior within and between the levels of a collaborative research effort? What sources of information circulate and inform risk models across the four levels?

These questions focus on the communication and circulation of risk interpretations and representations, and will illuminate 1) how people draw selectively on circulating information and 2) how actors adjust rhetoric and protocols to local circumstances (local here refers both to a village and to a conference room or meeting). First, I will analyze the content of popular (newspaper, radio, television) portrayals of AIDS risk, along with a set of “journals” amassed by one of the four core collaborative projects, in which local villagers reflect on the conversations they have about AIDS at the market, in bars, or at home. Newspapers in Malawi, which are accessible only to the literate, are key sites for the circulation of AIDS knowledge as well as recruitment of intermediaries for projects. I also plan to socialize with intermediaries and local friends (at bars, restaurants, football matches, the market) to note how people talk about AIDS, with whom and how they react to radio shows, newspaper articles and billboards. Finally, I will trace actors’ knowledge claims as they travel among and between four levels of a project. Through interviews, focus groups, social network analysis and participant observation of meetings, workshops, planning sessions, village fieldwork and conferences (Bernard 1998), I will describe the communicative acts that “make” knowledge, with special attention to the context of social interactions. This will allow me to assess what aspects of risk knowledge are communicated, altered, ignored and changed as persons move between and within social fields. I will use a discourse-centered approach to trace the adaptation of recurring themes, AIDS-speak, and tropes as they travel through the four levels (Urban 2001). This approach fosters a focus on who engages discourse, for what end, to what audience and explores the effects that discourse has on objects of research or knowledge.

RED TEXT= How collection of this data will permit me to answer my sub and main question BLUE TEXT= Methods to be utilized and data to be generated Note for those applying to NSF: Cite multiple methods and tend toward quantitative language

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Be sure you leave yourself ample time to revise (remember there are, in the case of SSRC, something like 1000 applicants, 700 for Wenner Gren; it’s likely this isn’t the best thing to write the night before!)

You should have a full draft a month before the deadline. Send this out in whole or in more manageable chunks (in an email- always a sneaky way to get committee members to read and comment) to your committee and integrate their comments and advice.

Ask friends in other disciplines (or no discipline) to read your proposal and tell you where they get lost or summarize back to you what they thought you meant in a section. This is SO helpful. Buy them a beer for their hard work.

You’ll need the cooperation of lots of other folks to support your application. Ask recommenders to read your proposal so they can write a strong letter and be sure to plan ahead in terms of securing research clearance or local affiliation (if relevant).

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Grant writing is rough, but you’ll get through it and, hopefully, be rewarded with a windfall of cash to fund your crucial and deserving research project.

Contact: Crystal Biruk Department of Anthropology cbiruk@sas.upenn.edu 