Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards | How To Apply

The African Critical Inquiry Programme is pleased to announce the 2021 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards to support African doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled at South African universities and conducting dissertation research on relevant topics. 

The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa.

The ACIP is committed to collaboration between scholars and the makers of culture/history, and to fostering inquiry into the politics of knowledge production, the relationships between the colonial/apartheid and the postcolonial/post apartheid, and the importance of critical pluralism as against nationalist discourse. ACIP is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

Funding is to be used for on-site dissertation research; research cannot be at the applicant’s home institution unless that institution has necessary site-specific research holdings not otherwise available to the applicant. Applicants who have completed significant funded dissertation research by the start of their proposed ACIP research may be ineligible to apply to extend research time.

Eligibility will be at the discretion of the ACIP Selection Committee, depending on completed research time and funding. Please note that the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards support dissertation research only and may not be used for dissertation write-up, tuition, study at other universities, conference participation, or to reimburse debts or expenses for research already completed. The programme does not accept applications from Ph.D. programmes in Law, Business, Medicine, Nursing, or Journalism, nor does it accept applications in doctoral programmes that do not lead to a Ph.D.

Eligibility:  

• The Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards are open to African postgraduate students (regardless of citizenship) in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
• Applicants must be currently registered in a Ph.D. programme in a South African university and be working on topics related to ACIP’s focus.
• Awards will support doctoral research projects focused on topics such as institutions of public culture, particular aspects of museums and exhibitions, forms and practices of public scholarship, culture and communication, and the theories, histories and systems of thought that shape and illuminate public culture and public scholarship.
• Applicants must submit a dissertation proposal that has been approved by their institution to confirm the award; this must be completed before they begin ACIP-supported on-site research or by December 2018, whichever comes first.

Selection Criteria: 

Selection will be based on the merit and strength of the application.

• Awards are open to proposals working with a range of methodologies in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, including research in archives and collections, fieldwork, interviews, surveys, and quantitative data collection.
• Applicants are expected to write in clear, intelligible prose for a selection committee that is multi-disciplinary and cross-regional.
• Proposals should show thorough knowledge of the major concepts, theories, and methods in the applicant’s discipline and in other related fields and include a bibliography relevant to the research.
• Applicants should specify why an extended period of on-site research is essential to successfully complete the proposed doctoral dissertation.
• Guidance and advice on how to write a good proposal and budget can be found in the Resources section of the ACIP website

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards 2021/2022