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 Critical DH Training Bursary program supports specialized training in digital research techniques, programs, and methods. The University of Toronto offers a wide array of DH training through CDHI Praxis Workshops and Digital Drop-Ins, the University Libraries, the Collaborative Digital Research Space (CDRS @ UTM), MakerSpace @ UTSC, and more. However, the specialized and collaborative nature of many DH projects require training not currently available on campus. To meet this need, CDHI is offering bursaries of $1000 to faculty and graduate students who wish to develop specialized skills at other DH training sites. 

Eligibility 

Applicants must be faculty members, librarians, staff, and graduate students actively enrolled in a program at U of T, both at the time of application and when the training will be completed. 

Activities eligible for funding include:  

• Tuition or program fees 
• Travel 
• Accommodation 

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 of your critical DH project (30 words, in plain language) 
• Brief bio of applicant (50 words) 
• Description of your learning objectives (150 words) 
• Detailed description of your DH project, including research question, DH methods involved, relation to existing critical DH literature, and the deliverables and timeline (300 words) 
• Description of the workshop, course, of training program (150 words) 
• Description of how the proposed training will contribute to your critical DH project (250 words) 
• Proposed budget, including additional sources of support 
• CV 

Deadline 

Rolling: Bursary applications can be submitted on an ongoing basis. 

Evaluation 

Applications will be evaluated on the following criteria:  

• Ability to clearly articulate the research questions, project goals, and methodology 
• Clear demonstration of the research significance 
• Clear demonstration of how proposed training will contribute to applicant’s research and learning 
• Project’s relationship to research that emphasizes questions of power, social justice, and critical theory in making and analyzing digital technologies 
• Feasibility of the project timeline 

Adjudication 

Applications will be adjudicated by the CDHI Executive Team. 

Reporting 

Bursary recipients will be expected to complete a report on their training activities. For training completed from May to November 2021, reports will be due December 10, 2021. For training completed from December 2021 to April 2022, reports will be due May 1, 2022.