The Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI), a University of Toronto strategic initiative, supports trans-disciplinary collaborations that emphasize questions of power, social justice, and critical theory in digital humanities research. Our vision is to forge a new paradigm of critical humanities scholarship, one that bridges the humanities’ emphasis on power and culture in historical perspective with the tools and analysis of digital technology. The CDHI is new mix of research workshop and design atelier, equipping humanities researchers with the technical and design expertise to use digital tools to ask new questions, share new knowledge, and analyze power and inequality in historical perspective.  

The Digital Humanities Learning Community Grant is a grant of up to $2000 offered in support of groups of four or more individuals co-working towards specific digital humanities research during the Winter and Spring 2022 semesters. Groups must meet a minimum of four times between January 3 and June 30, 2022. While the proposed learning communities should have defined research goals, opportunities for group training, experiential learning, and/or experimental methodologies may also be written into the application. Groups may also write into their applications a request to use the CDHI lab (JHB222) or CDRS (UTM) as meeting or co-working spaces. In June 2022, funded groups will be required to provide a short report on their activities. 

Eligibility  

The application should name a principal applicant, who must be a faculty member, librarian, staff member, research fellow, instructor, postdoc and/or graduate student actively enrolled in a program at U of T.  The named individuals in the group may also include undergraduate students enrolled in a program at UofT and up to two members from outside the university.  

Activities eligible for funding include but are not limited to:   

• Honoraria for guest speakers 
• Catering for group meetings 
• Subscriptions for necessary DH software if being used to further the groups’ work 
• Stipend for an RA to organize the activities and schedules of the working group 

Funds cannot be used for:  

• Equipment   

How to Apply  

To apply, please submit to dhn.admin@utoronto.ca a proposal (max 2 pages) that includes the following:  

• Brief description (up to 500 words) of your working group including research objectives and propose group activities (written in plain language)  
• A list of proposed group members (minimum four), identifying the principal applicant(s). Please include titles, organizations, and emails. 
• A CV of the principal applicant(s). 
• A budget of up to $2000. (Please note that in successful grants where the lead does not have a research fund, the grant will be issued as reimbursed expenses). 

Deadline  

Applications are due by December 10, 2021. The working groups will be notified of the results by December 20, 2021.  

Evaluation  

Applications will be evaluated on the following criteria:   

• Ability to clearly articulate the learning community’s goals.  
• Clear demonstration of how proposed learning community will contribute to the applicants’ research and training. 
• Clear demonstration of how the proposed learning community’s research and training emphasizes questions of power, social justice, and critical theory in making and analyzing digital technologies . 

Adjudication  

Applications will be adjudicated by the CDHI Executive Team.  

Reporting 

All groups will be asked to report on their activities by June 30, 2022. 

How to Reach Us  

To contact the Managing Director, please write: d.taschereau@utoronto.ca. To reach the Faculty Director, please write: dhn.director@utoronto.ca. To submit application materials, to reach the CDHI team, or to join the CDHI listserv, please write: dhn.admin@utoronto.ca. To subscribe to the CDHI’s biweekly newsletter, please follow this link and complete our sign-up form. Follow us on Twitter at @UofTDHN. Explore our website at: https://dhn.utoronto.ca/.