Strategies for Funding and Developing Your Dissertation Research

I will discuss strategies for research grant-writing, including exploratory research grants, language study travel grants, and formal dissertation research grants, over the course of a graduate career.  Successful grant applications not only move your research forward by affording access to archives, people, institutions, or resources, but also provide a unique opportunity to refine your own sense of that research and to develop effective ways of articulating its potential and significance.  Grant-writing in today’s diverse and competitive funding environment also provides a unique chance to engage with the interdisciplinarity, or cross-field connections, of your work and should encourage creativity and conscientious thinking.  We’ll discuss how preparing grant applications – no matter how small or specifically targeted – can be woven into the broader practical and intellectual work of completing your doctorate.  Here, approached as more than simply a way to fund a stint in an archive or as a feather in your professional cap – or a panic-inducing addition to an already busy semester – the cycle of research grant applications can become a productive stage in the development and completion of the dissertation project.