Annual Grant Cycle

Communication Department, UC San Diego

Call for Democracy Lab (DLab) Proposals

AY 2023-24

Due Date  - Forthcoming

We are pleased to announce the call for DLab grants for the 2023-2024 academic year. For this funding cycle, we will be making awards of up to $5,000 each.

Eligibility

Any member of the Communication Department who is working on an existing community-based research project or who is prototyping new ideas that address one or more of the DLab’s thematic foci may apply. The DLab’s current thematic areas include:

• Projects aimed at producing media, technologies, art, exhibits, or installations that address historical and/or lived conditions, power relations, and/or inequalities of race, gender, age, linguistic, environmental, geographical and/or ethnic affiliation; preference will be given to projects that engage with grassroots organizing efforts and that prioritize community collaborations;

• Projects exploring, critiquing, and proposing ideas, practices, and relations associated with democracy, broadly conceived; 

• Projects centered on engagement and collaboration with local communities and that address how members of these communities develop a sense of collective continuance or work to shape, change, or contest their current circumstances; 

• Teaching or planning courses, teach-ins, and other pedagogical practices that engage students and community members in critical thinking about existing institutional practices and collective struggles and/or in envisioning more just futures.

Grantee Expectations

1. Award recipients are required to participate in the DLab Showcase, an annual event held in the spring in which recipients of DLab awards will make short presentations on their projects to the department and campus community; 

2. Award recipients are required to share documentation of their project for inclusion on the DLab website; 

3. Award recipients are required to submit a single page report on the use of funds and the status of their project at the end of the 2023-24 AY.

4. Funds must be used in accordance with the project plan that is submitted with the proposal; 

5. Funds must be used prior to June 30, 2024. Applicants can request a no-cost extension, which is subject to approval by the DLab leadership team. Unused funds that are not approved for a no-cost extension will be returned to the DLab for distribution to future applicants. 

Selection Criteria

Applications will be reviewed by the DLab leadership team. Applications will be assessed based on the following criteria:

1. Commitment to DLab Themes: successful proposals will meet all the eligibility criteria detailed above and demonstrate a commitment to at least one of the Democracy Lab’s thematic foci;

2. Feasibility: successful proposals will have a clearly stated goal and evidence of supportive relationships in place to accomplish goal during the 2023-24 AY; 

3. Financial Need: All else being equal, applicants without other sources of funding for their project and/or who have not previously received a DLab award will be prioritized. Relatedly, we will try to prioritize projects by graduate students, adjuncts, and other members of the Department who have limited access to research and project funds.