Digital Humanities Advancement Grants (DHAG) support digital projects throughout their life cycles, from early start-up phases through implementation and long-term sustainability. Experimentation, reuse, and extensibility are hallmarks of this grant category, leading to innovative work that can scale to enhance research, teaching, and public programming in the humanities.
This program is offered twice per year. Proposals are welcome for digital initiatives in any area of the humanities.
Through a special partnership, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) anticipates providing additional funding to this program to encourage innovative collaborations between museum or library professionals and humanities professionals to advance preservation of, access to, use of, and engagement with digital collections and services. Through this partnership, IMLS and NEH may jointly fund some DHAG projects that involve collaborations with museums and/or libraries.
Digital Humanities Advancement Grants may involve:
- creating or enhancing experimental, computationally-based methods, techniques, or infrastructure that contribute to the humanities;
- pursuing scholarship that examines the history, criticism, and philosophy of digital culture and its impact on society; or
- conducting evaluative studies that investigate the practices and the impact of digital scholarship on research, pedagogy, scholarly communication, and public engagement.
Grants are available for early-stage planning, development, and implementation. Applicants must state in their narrative which funding level they seek. Applicants should carefully choose the funding level appropriate to the needs of the proposed project.
Level I:
- Level I awards (up to $75,000 and up to 24 months) support small research projects or early stages of larger projects, including activities such as:
- developing a research agenda or strategy
- identifying appropriate methods or technologies for new and existing digital humanities projects
- convening planning sessions with stakeholders or conducting audience research to determine user needs and priorities
- designing experimental alpha-level prototypes
- facilitating convenings to address field-wide questions
- Outcomes for Level I projects may include:
- reports and position papers (especially for projects involving evaluative studies)
- new consortia or partnerships
- plans for future research and technical development, design documents, and/or data integration
- articles, essays, books, edited volumes, or reports
- testing and assessment reports from alpha-level prototypes
Level II:
- Level II awards (from $75,001 to $150,000 and up to 24 months) support projects that have completed an initial planning phase and are poised to scale up based on prior research and development with a well-defined work plan, including activities such as:
- technical development and/or user experience design for beta-stage prototypes of open-source tools or software
- data curation
- meetings with advisory board members or collaborators
- evaluation and refinement of the project's methods, workflows, or tools to teach humanities concepts or to support humanities research
- development of virtual/in-person workshops or tutorials to disseminate project results
- Outcomes for Level II projects may include:
- release of add-ons, code libraries, or working prototypes of tools
- implementation of new workflows through humanities-based case studies
- training data or models
- workshops, online tutorials, and other forms of documentation
- publications or conference presentations to share project results
Level III:
- Level III awards (from $150,001 to $350,000 and up to 36 months) support the expansion of mature projects with an established user base and strong dissemination plans beyond the applicant institution. To apply for a Level III award, you must have completed a planning or prototyping phase. In addition, your application must demonstrate prior success, including documenting how many users or visitors your current project has or a summary of prior internal or external evaluations of your current project. Earlier phases of the project's development may or may not have been supported by NEH or other funders. Level III awards support activities such as:
- implementation of technical plans and user experience design, including transformation of a prototype into a usable resource
- testing with targeted user communities
- code review and bug fixing
- development of training materials and documentation to promote wide use of the project
- preparation of presentations and publications to disseminate project results
- preparation of data, software, or websites for future preservation
- accessibility compliance review
- Outcomes for Level III projects may include:
- launch of the digital project
- public release of final software, code, or datasets
- publication and presentation of research and results
- community engagement and outreach events, including workshops
- documentation and tutorials in multiple formats
- implementation of data management and sustainability plans
Level III applicants may request up to $100,000 in federal matching funds (for a total award of up to $450,000) to leverage external funding.
Past funded projects may be found here: https://www.neh.gov/our-work/listing?f%5B0%5D=content_type%3Aproject&f%5B1%5D=our_work_division_office%3A346