NSF Cultural Anthropology Program

The primary objective of the Cultural Anthropology Program is to support basic scientific research on the causes, consequences, and complexities of human social and cultural variability. Anthropological research spans a wide gamut, and contemporary cultural anthropology is an arena in which diverse research traditions and methodologies are valid. Recognizing the breadth of the field’s contributions to science, the Cultural Anthropology Program welcomes proposals for empirically grounded, theoretically engaged, and methodologically sophisticated research in all sub-fields of cultural anthropology. Because the National Science Foundation’s mandate is to support basic research, the NSF Cultural Anthropology Program does not fund research that takes as its primary goal improved clinical practice or applied policy. Program research priorities include, but are not limited to, research that increases our understanding of:

• Socio-cultural drivers of critical anthropogenic processes such as deforestation, desertification, land cover change, urbanization, and poverty
• Resilience and robustness of socio-cultural systems
• Conflict, cooperation, and altruism
• Economy, culture, migration, and globalization
• Variability and change in kinship and family norms and practices
• Cultural and social contexts of health and disease
• Social regulation, governmentality, and violence
• Origins of complexity in socio-cultural systems
• Language and culture: orality and literacy, sociolinguistics, and cognition
• Human variation through empirically grounded ethnographic descriptions
• Mathematical and computational models of sociocultural systems such as social network analysis, agent-based models, and integration of agent-based models with geographic information systems (GIS)

Amount note:The award amount varies, depending on grant category. Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (DDRIG) Program budget requests may not exceed $20,000. There is no ceiling on senior proposal budgets, but a typical award rarely exceeds $100,000 per year of the award, including indirect costs. Faculty Scholars Program awards are for up to 12 months and for a maximum of $50,000. Grants for Rapid The Cultural Anthropology program funding limit for Response Research (RAPID) and EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) is $25,000 including direct costs. Awards are limited to $5,000 for Research Experience for Graduate Students (REG) Supplements and $4,000 for Reserch Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements. Funding amounts for workshops, training programs (training workshops, short courses, and fieldwork programs), and Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Grants is unspecified. 


Deadline: January 15, 2013

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