NEH State and Impact of the Humanities Program

Deadline: Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Funding Range:  $75,000 - $150,000. Funding varies by project level; visit link below for details. 

Note: As federal funding agencies are undergoing program review to comply with the presidential administration’s funding priorities, this opportunity may be subject to delay or cancellation. 

ABOUT: The State and Impact of the Humanities program aims to expand our understanding of the role that the humanities play in private, public, and scholarly life by supporting data-grounded research studies that investigate the state, impact, and value of the humanities in the United States. For the purposes of this program, the humanities are broadly defined as activities associated with exploring, interpreting, and preserving the diversity of human cultures, ideas, practices, and experiences, past and present. This program will fund research that helps us better understand how and why the humanities matter, and how we can build a stronger, more impactful humanities. Project teams may involve one or multiple people and must include at least one humanist.

Proposed studies must fall under one or more of the following research categories. Note that projects should not primarily be conducting work within these categories, but rather about them. This program does not fund evaluation of a single humanities program, product, or event, such as an educational initiative, podcast, or exhibition.

1. Humanities Education: Elementary (K-5), middle (6-8), and secondary (9-12) education; post-secondary education (associates, undergraduate, and graduate programs); and educational programming outside of degree-granting learning environments.

2. Humanities Research: Scholarship (for academics, general audiences, or both) conducted within and across humanities disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary research involving humanities questions in the sciences, medicine, law, and other fields.

3. Public Humanities: Humanities work intended to engage with large and diverse public audiences through a broad range of public-facing and publicly accessible formats such as interpretive museum exhibitions, historic site interpretation, public dialogues, public-facing projects led by educational or cultural organizations, and co-creative community collaborations.

4. Preservation and Access: Preserving and providing access to humanities collections, including community and grassroots preservation initiatives.

5. Humanities Infrastructure: Buildings, institutions, and communities and the financial and other resources that support them.

NEH welcomes applications that address topics such as:

• trends in humanities research, teaching, and practice;

• economic, civic, and social impact of the humanities;

• labor and careers in the humanities;

• public perceptions of the humanities;

• humanities infrastructure and funding;

• the humanities and individual or collective well-being;

• broadening participation in the humanities;

• digital technology and the humanities; and

• the coronavirus pandemic and the humanities.

APPLY: For a detailed program description, please see the solicitation attached in the portal announcement, or follow the link to the NEH’s State and Impact of the Humanities program page.

NOTE: If you are interested in applying or have any questions, please contact our Pre-Award Specialists Pia Gabriel at pg12@humboldt.edu, Kaz Wegmuller at kaz.wegmuller@humboldt.edu, or Jocelyne Takatsuno at jt366@humboldt.edu, before March 16, 2025.