Seed Grant for Faculty Research in Human Rights

Our seed grant competition is meant to support and promote faculty research projects on human rights and to facilitate the writing of external grant proposals. We offer one award of $10,000 each academic year. Proposed research projects should make a significant contribution to ongoing scholarly and/or policy debates in the field of human rights. They will be evaluated for overall excellence on human rights issues, understood broadly. All proposals will be reviewed by a multidisciplinary committee chaired by the Director of the Research and Data Hub of the the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute.

2024 Seed Grant Recipient

Asif Majid

Asif Majid
Assistant Professor, Dramatic Arts & Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute

"Performing Muharram in Plurality: Art, Bodies, and Commemoration in Lucknow and Hyderabad"

Asif Majid is a scholar-artist-educator working at the intersection of racialized sociopolitical identities, multimedia, marginality, and new performance, particularly through devising community-based participatory theatre and making improvisational music. Currently, he serves as Assistant Professor of Theatre and Human Rights at the University of Connecticut. Prior to UConn, Asif was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow with the San Francisco Arts Commission and a Lab Fellow with The Laboratory for Global Performance and Performance. 

Former Recipients

2023

  • Sara Silverstein
    Assistant Professor, Department of History & Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute
    "A Place to Exist: Histories of Statelessness from Empire to European Integration"

2022

  • Manisha Desai
    Professor, Sociology and Asian and Asian American Studies
    "Women’s Rights, Land Rights, and Climate Justice"

2021

  • Alaina Brenick
    Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Science
    "A Right to Housing, A Right to Health: How do Connecticut Constituents View the Homeless Community’s Right to Housing During and Beyond COVID-19"

Eligibility Criteria & Requirements

  1. Open to full-time, permanent UConn faculty in any discipline at any UConn campus.
  2. Applicant must be affiliated with UConn during the entire award period.
  3. Applicants may apply for both the HRI Seed Grant and the HRI Small Grant, but the recipient of the HRI Seed Grant will be ineligible to receive an HRI Small Grant in the same year.
  4. Disbursement of funds is contingent upon receipt of any required IRB approval.
  5. The grant holder agrees to:
    1. Submit a progress report (2 page maximum) on the research project by July 30, 2026.
    2. The Grant holder also agrees to present at a public HRI Research Talk in the year following their Grant.
  6. The seed grant may be used to:
    1. Support graduate assistant or undergraduate student labor costs at university-established rates.
    2. Contribute towards course replacement costs, following the model of the Research Excellence Program. This must be approved by your department head.
    3. Pay for direct costs associated with travel for research or research support costs.

How to Apply

Access the application via Microsoft Forms. The application requires the following materials:

  1. Narrative description of the research project (5 pages, double spaced, 12 pt. font);
  2. Brief explanation of plans to apply for outside grants (no more than a half page);
  3. Budget narrative (1 page maximum);
  4. Bibliography for the project (1 page maximum); and
  5. Current CV

Application Deadline for 2025: April 18

Evaluation Criteria

The following criteria will be used in evaluating applications:

  • Significance of the contribution that the project will make to knowledge in the field of human rights.
  • Quality of the conception, definition, organization, and description of the project.
  • Feasibility of the project, including rationale for the budget.
  • Priority will be given to applicants who indicate clearly their plans to apply for external funding.
  • Additional priority may be given to applications from junior faculty and to those faculty who have not received this grant in recent years.
  • Applications that do not follow the guidelines for page length and supporting documents will not be considered.

Questions about the competition? Please email humanrights@uconn.edu or call 860-486-5393.