Current opportunities
As funding opportunities change, this page will be updated regularly. If you'd like to be notified about the opening of application cycles or new opportunities, sign up for our newsletter. For questions, contact us at humanities@uwyo.edu.
Fellowships are awarded through our Humanities Research Group program, open to UW faculty and staff. The application cycle is currently closed but will open again in Fall 2025.
All fellows receive a $4000 stipend. Fellows in the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Agriculture, Honors College, and the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources will also receive one course replacement during the fellowship year. Fellows in the Libraries, UW Museum, and American Heritage Center will receive an equivalent amount of release time. Fellows in other units may receive a course release, at the discretion of their dean or director.
In partnership with UW's College of Arts & Sciences, we provide a $1000 scholarship opportunity to undergraduates studying the humanities. Applicants must be full-time undergraduate students within the College of Arts & Scienes and majoring in the humanities. Successful candidates will demonstrate both academic excellence and community involvement during their studies. Applicants must demonstrate a minimum GPA of 3.0 and must provide a short essay on community involvement not to exceed one page. Eligible students should apply through the WyoScholarships portal. Applications are typically due in March, with the winner receiving their award in the subsequent semester.
With donor support, we hope to create a scholarship opportunity for graduate students in the near future.
We invite applications for subvention funds to help defray costs of publishing original research with significant humanities content. Funds may be used only for current or upcoming expenses directly related to publication, such as image preparation, permissions, indexing, proofreading, or the like. We will also consider covering open-access fees if the author provides context about a) why the journal or press requires such fees and b) why it is important that they publish in this particular venue. These funds may only be used for publications in not-for-profit presses, journals, or other venues.
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. To apply, submit a contract or communication from the publishing venue stating that the work has been accepted for publication, together with a statement of no longer than one page, including an abstract of the publication, its publishing venue, the status of the publication, a brief budget describing how the funds will be used.
Please send questions and applications to humanities@uwyo.edu. Recipients of subventions are requested to forward a copy of the final product (book, article, resource) to WIHR upon publication. Recipients are required to credit the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research in the publication’s acknowledgments.
Average award: $750
We invite proposals from UW faculty and staff doing humanities-related work to help support their research travel. These awards are intended to cover the costs of travel—airfare, accommodations, access fees—aimed at conducting research (i.e. data collection, interviews, archival work). You may include materials required to facilitate research travel (data recorder, external hard drive, camera, etc.) as a budget line in a broader proposal, but we will not exclusively fund materials requests.
Although preference will be given to funding research travel, we will also consider funding conference travel in this category. In order to receive conference funding, applicants must be presenting research at the conference. Also, they must demonstrate that they do not receive funding for one conference per year from their home department, or that the funding they do receive does not fully cover one conference per year.
Projects are funded through a semesterly competitions; a call for applications will be made at the start of each semester. Applications should include a clear project plan, a description of outcomes/deliverables, and a detailed budget. They will be evaluated on the following criteria: sophistication of research, feasibility of proposed project/timeline, and relevance to the important issues in the humanities.
Maximum award: $2000
We invite applications for group events and collaborations—colloquia, symposia, workshops, interest groups, and other working groups that meet regularly to share out research ideas on shared topics of interest—that focus on any of the following research areas: Environmental Humanities, Western/Wyoming Humanities, Global Humanities, Cultural Studies, and Indigenous Resurgence (e.g., language revitalization, sovereignty, storytelling, environmental knowledges, etc).
We will consider funding space needs, refreshments, small honoraria for participants, costs for recording/casting, and other related expenses. The purpose of this funding category is to convene researchers working on similar issue areas who might not otherwise get the chance to share their ideas with one another, and potentially to initiate further collaborative work, interdisciplinary grant-writing, etc. These groups may be designed to initiate discussions between those doing early-stage research on a particular topic, or they may be structured around the sharing out of more developed research. In either case, the desired research outcomes of the group participants should be made clear in the application materials.
Groups must include multiple UW faculty and/or staff members, but they may also include community members, graduate students, and faculty from other institutions (however, the majority of the participants must be UW faculty/staff). This funding is not earmarked for invited keynote speakers—please see our events funding call if you are seeking monies for that purpose.
Funds will be awarded through semesterly competitions; a call for proposals will be made at the start of each semester. Applications will be evaluated on the following criteria: relevance to a Humanities issue area described above; plan for multiple members of the group to share out their research; clarity of desired outcomes for the activity. Applications should include a clear project plan and timeline (1-2 pgs.) and a detailed budget.
Maximum award: $2500
We welcome applications for events at which research will be shared out: e.g., for bringing in visiting speakers or for book launches if they involve talks/roundtables. Performances, film screenings, etc. will only be funded if they include explicit discussions of craft/research. Events should be open to all interested UW Humanities faculty (and students and community members if appropriate).
Funds are awarded on competitive basis; a call for applications will be made every other month. Applications will be evaluated on the following criteria: Relevance to important issues in the Humanities; research being shared out at the event; clarity of event plan. Applications should include a clear description of the event, the research being shared out, and desired outcomes (1-2 pgs.), as well as a detailed budget. We will consider funding space needs, refreshments, honoraria, travel costs for visiting speakers, costs for recording/casting, and other related expenses. Please indicate in your budget if you have funding from other sources (and if so, how much).
Maximum award: $1500
In collaboration with Wyoming Humanities, our state humanities council, we are working on a funding opportunity for community-engaged research involving both UW researchers and community members. Stay tuned!
At this time, courses releases are only available through the Humanities Research Group fellowship. However, because we recognize how valuable a reduction in teaching load is for humanities researchers, we hope that we can offer competitive course release program in the near future.
