The Projects and Proposals Committee of the American Society for Legal History exists to encourage new initiatives in the study, presentation, and production of legal historical scholarship and in the communication of legal history to all its possible publics and audiences. It is the mission of the committee to find ways to bring talented new voices into our field, to encourage novel forms of scholarly interchange, to support pedagogical experiments in legal history, and to seed new forms and venues for public history.
The Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History has asked the Committee to offer particular encouragement to two arenas for growth in the field. First, we have been asked to help internationalize legal history, by which we mean both to support ways to widen the study of legal history beyond its core Anglo-American base and to bring a global array of scholars and students of legal history into conversation with one another. And second, we have been asked to find ways to bring a younger generation of scholars and students into the field.But beyond those particular arenas for initiative, we encourage proposals that are engaged both with what may seem to be “traditional” subjects in legal history and ones that move off in nontraditional ways. In the past, we have supported conferences (including the costs of bringing participants together, who could not afford to come otherwise), and we have supported internationalizing exchanges. We would consider subventions of scholarly publications or of museum exhibits or pedagogical experiments or of any number of other collective pursuits. We do not support individual research projects. Nor will we recommend for funding projects that have already been funded at the recommendation of the committee three times. We are not a funding source for ongoing and recurrent activities of the field or of the Society.
Most of the projects we have supported have been in the 4000 to 6000 dollar range. Ordinarily, we would expect that projects would have other institutional collaborators and/or cosponsors (including home universities). Proposals may come from educational institutions or from informal groups or networks of individuals. In most cases, someone involved in the proposal will be a member of the Society.
(It should be noted that because of previous commitments already made by the Board of Directors the amounts available for new initiatives in the 2018 funding cycle will be limited.)
We issue a yearly call for proposals. That call will be sent to all members of the American Society for Legal History later in July 2018. Our deadline for receiving applications will be September 17, 2018. The committee will then review the proposals, with the goal of recommending a list to the Board of Directors of the Society in preparation for their meeting in November 2018.
Our application form is relatively informal [and appears after the jump].
And if you have any questions, please write to Hendrik (Dirk) Hartog, at hartog@princeton.edu.
The ASLH Budget Application is after the jump.
Committee on Projects and Proposals Application Form for a Grant
Date of application:
Title of Project (Grant Application):
Name of applicant:
Applicant's Email address:
Applicant's Telephone No.:
If grant is to be paid to an organization, list exact legal name:
Address of organization:
Names, addresses, telephone numbers, and emails of core participants or organizers:
Contact person and title:
Purpose of project proposal (one sentence):
Grant request: $
Dates covered (mo/year to mo/year):
Narrative (3 pages maximum)
The narrative should contain:
1. Funding Request - Describe the primary purpose of the initiative and the need or problem that it is seeking to address. Describe the community that the initiative plans to serve and how this community will benefit from the initiative. Explain the strategies employed to implement the initiative and the anticipated length of the initiative. Explain how the initiative contributes to the ASLH's overall mission. Be sure to include a description of all collaborating or cosponsoring institutions and of the extent (financial or otherwise) of their collaboration.
2. History - If funding is being sought for an ongoing initiative, describe the initiative and its past accomplishments. [Note that the Committee has been directed by the Board of Directors of the ASLH not to recommend for funding any project or proposal more than three times. After three iterations, ongoing projects or institutions may become part of the regular budget that the Board of Directors discuss and enact at its annual meeting.]
3. Evaluation - Explain how you will measure the effectiveness of the initiative. Describe the criteria for a successful initiative and the results you expect to have achieved by the end of the funding period.
4. Project budget - Provide a line-by-line budget showing all anticipated income and expenditures.
Email your completed application, narrative, and any supporting material to: Hendrik Hartog, Chairman, Committee on Projects and Proposals,hartog@princeton.edu by September 17, 2018. Applications will be considered by the Committee on Projects and Proposals, which recommends expenditures to the Society's Board of Directors at its annual meeting in November 2018.
