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The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in the United States and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft e.V., DFG) are working together to offer support for projects that contribute to developing and implementing digital infrastructures and services for humanities research.
In order to encourage new approaches and develop innovative methods in any field of the humanities, these grants provide funding for up to three years in any of the following areas:
- developing innovative methods—as well as standards and best practices—for building and merging digital collections that are important to the American and German scholarly community for use in research;
- developing and implementing generic tools, methods, and techniques for accessing and processing digital resources relevant to humanities research;
- ensuring the completion and long-term sustainability of existing digital resources (typically in conjunction with a library or archive);
- creating new digital modes of scholarly communication and publishing that facilitate international cooperation and dissemination of humanities scholarship; and
- developing models and case studies for effectively managing digital data generated in humanities research projects (for example, texts, audio files, photographs, 3D objects).
Collaboration between U.S. and German partners is a key requirement for this grant category. Each application must be sponsored by at least one eligible German individual or institution, and at least one U.S. institution (see Section III, Eligibility, below), and there must be a project director from each country. The partners will collaborate to write a single application package. The U.S. partner will submit the package to NEH via Grants.gov, and the German partner will submit it to DFG via regular postal service and preferably also by e-mail.
Program Statistics
In the first three competitions the NEH/DFG Bilateral Digital Humanities Program received an average of eleven applications per year. The program made an average of four awards per year, for a funding ratio of 36 percent.
The potential applicant pool for this program is limited, since applications require international cooperation between German and US institutions.
The number of applications to an NEH grant program can vary widely year to year, as can the funding ratio. Information about the average number of applications and awards in recent competitions is meant only to provide historical context for the current competition. Information on the number of applications and awards in individual competitions is available from odh@neh.gov.
Questions?
If you have questions about the program, contact the Office of Digital Humanities staff at odh@neh.gov. Applicants wishing to speak to a staff member by telephone should provide in the e-mail message a telephone number and a preferred time to call.