AHRC: Seeking Applications for Nahrein Network Research Grant Awards

Deadline: 15 November 2018

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is seeking applications for its “Nahrein Network Research Grant Awards”.

Aims

These awards support interdisciplinary research on themes relating to one or more of the Nahrein Network’s five aims:

• To better understand the current situation
  • They aim to develop a fuller historical understanding of the current exclusion of local experts and audiences from the production and consumption of knowledge about Middle Eastern antiquity. To do this they will:
    • conduct focus groups to scope current interests and expertise, obstacles and opportunities for work on history, culture and heritage in Middle Eastern universities, museums and archives, NGOs and community groups;
    • carry out and fund historical research on the current deracination of ancient Middle Eastern history and archaeology, through archival research and oral histories of the politics of the region’s past. Theywill cover Ottoman times, through the Mandate era, independence, Baathism, to the present, and focus especially on the exclusions of women and minority social groups.
• To raise the profile of local expertise
  • They aim to facilitate Middle Eastern humanities academics in re-engaging with regional and global academic communities, as producers of research for international consumption. To do this they will:
    • develop training programmes, bespoke visiting scholarships, and peer-mentoring groups on relevant research methodology, grant writing and academic leadership. They will offer particular support for participation and leadership from women, minorities, and Early Career Researchers.
    • offer funding opportunities for the current generation of Middle Eastern humanities academics to undertake collaborative, transregional research projects, with support to disseminate their methods, findings and outputs;
    • trial new university-level pedagogies of Mesopotamian history in Arabic and other local languages, in order to produce the next generation of local researchers on local Middle Eastern antiquity. In this way they will widen access to the core research skills of post-excavation identification, decipherment and analysis of archaeological finds, through ancient languages and scripts, images, and objects.
• To improve the job prospects of the region’s youth
  • They aim to improve employability and leadership potential for humanities graduates from Middle Eastern universities, by:
    • initiating dialogue between teachers, students, ministries and employers to identify the most needed and valued humanities-based skills and attributes in the region’s modernising economy;
    • funding research projects to develop locally effective university-level teaching of transferable humanities skills;
    • contributing to UNESCO Iraq’s advisory work on humanities curriculum reform in schools for the Iraqi Ministry of Education, helping to better prepare school leavers for university.
• To help heritage organisations better serve local needs
  • They aim to enable Middle Eastern museums, archives, cultural heritage sites to contribute to local tourism and knowledge economies. To do this they will:
    • bring together ancient historians, educators, cultural heritage professionals, local NGOs and community groups to better understand needs and interests, obstacles and opportunities;
    • carrying out and funding research to develop re-usable, adaptable case studies in public education, whether in museums, on UNESCO World Heritage sites, or other cultural centres, whether for use on location and/or in print, broadcast, and online media;
    • working with UNESCO Iraq to advocate for the social and economic importance of cultural institutions in local and regional development.
• To help post-conflict healing and reconciliation
  • They aim to promote ancient Middle Eastern history as a ‘safe’ space for public debate around sensitive social, and political matters of current concern. To do this they will:
    • fund research projects on themes of common interest to antiquity and modernity, such as: exile, diaspora and return; cultural memory and forgetting; local, national, and regional identities and interactions; living in the landscape; legal systems and personal rights;
    • use these findings to help the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI), local NGOs and community groups use antiquity as a channel for public discussion of issues around post-conflict reconciliation and change.

Funding Information

There are two types of funding:

• Small grants of up to £30,000 (FEC) for projects led by Iraqi researchers, or collaborations between Iraqi and UK researchers.
• Large grants of up to £100,000 (FEC) for collaborations between Iraqi and UK researchers.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applications are invited from postdoctoral researchers (or equivalent) who are employed by, or have an official connection with:
  • a UK or Iraqi Higher Education Institution (i.e., a university or similar organisation), or:
  • a non-academic organisation (e.g. cultural heritage organisation, NGO, community group) in the UK or Iraq, with a demonstrated capacity to conduct research.
• Applications for small grants must be led by an Iraqi researcher and do not need UK collaborators.
• Applications for large grants must be made jointly by researchers in the UK and Iraq who each fulfil these eligibility criteria. Large grants may also involve researchers from other countries.

How to Apply

Applicants can download the applications form via given website.

For more information, please visit AHRC.