Fellowships and Research Grants for Graduate Students

Ethnic Studies 2024-25 Graduate Student Research and Travel Grants

The Department of Ethnic Studies is currently accepting applications for the 2024-25 Graduate Student Research and Travel Grants. This grant is intended to support research-related travel to professional meetings and conferences for presenting invited and accepted papers, posters, and other scholarly work. The grant may be used to cover part of the expenses associated with travel, lodging, registration fees, and related expenses not supported by other financial awards and in accordance with university travel policies.

• Travel grants are awarded once per quarter. Travel grant amounts will vary between $200-$400 and will be distributed in the form of reimbursement. Reimbursement requests for travel can only be initiated after your travel is completed. Be sure to provide as many details as possible in your application regarding your travel so that our department can advise further and ensure all university and department policies are provided and followed.

• Research grants are intended to partially offset research related costs that are not supported by other financial awards. Research support grant amounts will depend on need as outlined in your proposal for support.  Research grants will be distributed via stipend.

• Students are only eligible to receive one travel or research grant per year. We encourage you to apply at least one month before the start of the conference you are planning to attend.

Application Deadlines:

• November 15, 2024 (For Travel or Research 10/1-12/31) 
• February 15, 2025 (For Travel or Research 1/1-3/30) 
• April 15, 2025 (For Travel or Research 4/1-6/30)

Eligibility

• Must be enrolled full-time in the Ethnic Studies PhD program at the time of application and when travel will occur.
• Must be in good academic standing.
• Must present your original work at the conference.

Application Requirements

• Complete the Graduate Student Research Travel Grant Form
• Send the following supporting documents to ethnicstudiesphd@ucsd.edu
  • Your abstract for presenting at the conference
  • Your official invitation/approval to present at the conference

Please direct any questions to the Graduate Coordinator at ethnicstudiesphd@ucsd.edu

List of Eligible Conferences (this list is not exhaustive, and other conferences will be considered)

American Studies Association (ASA)

Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS)

Association for Ethnic Studies

LatinX Studies Association

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA)

Additional Sources of Travel Funds:

GPSA Travel Grants

Reimbursement Requirements

UC San Diego requires that all receipts be turned in within 30 days of travel completion. We highly recommend initiating the reimbursement processes within 2 weeks after the applied conference ends to expedite the process.

Required documentation to complete your reimbursement request:

• Your official invitation/approval to present at the conference
• Completed UC San Diego Student Certification for Business-Related Travel signed by your PI or the Fiscal and HR Analyst (Amanda Vassall, avassall@ucsd.edu)
• Eligible expense receipts 

The International Institute is currently accepting applications for the 2024-25 Graduate Student Research and Travel Grants. The awards are intended to partially offset dissertation research travel expenses incurred in the U.S. or abroad. Awards are intended for research travel between June 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, and typically range between $1,500 to $2,500. Funds may be used for travel, research assistance, and in some cases supplies such as cameras or recording devices. Applications are due no later than Monday, March 18, 2024.

Visit the International Institute's website for application details.

Awards are intended for summer research projects that function as an internship. II will fund a total of 2 projects, with one CC student from Cuyamaca and one from San Diego Mesa College. Each CC student will receive $2,500 for the summer stipend and each graduate student will receive $2,500. Application deadline: March 15, 2024, at 5 p.m.

Visit the International Institute's website for application details.

The Speculative Environmental Futures Collective, funded by a Mellon grant, is pleased to offer seed grants to graduate students in the Literature and Ethnic Studies Departments working on Speculative Environmental Futures research projects.

Applications are due Tuesday, December 19, 2023, by midnight. They will be reviewed by a faculty committee and awardees will be selected by Friday, December 22, 2023. Stipends will be awarded in February.

The Speculative Environmental Futures Collective at UCSD is an interdisciplinary, cross-divisional formation, centered in the Ethnic Studies and Literature Departments, for collaboration and research, conversations, and student participation in the field of Speculative Environmental Futures Studies. By convening faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates from the Ethnic Studies and Literature Departments, as well as across campus and the UC system, SEFC supports research, study, discussions, workshops, and events at the intersections of Environmental Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Speculative Literary and Cultural Studies. Through our events, research, and collaborations, SEFC explores how imagining more just environmental futures crucially depends on scholars, activists, and community partners using speculative literary and cultural forms to envision and create change. 

For the 2023-24 cycle of awards, we will award up to 22 Research Grants/Stipends in the amount of $5000 for graduate students to conduct research in the field of Speculative Environmental Studies. 

Student Research Grants/Stipends are intended to support emergent research situated within the field of Speculative Environmental Futures, broadly conceived. Although preference will be given to dissertations, talks, articles, and projects that center such questions and themes, applications will be accepted from any project that contains at least one chapter or a major focus in a shorter or creative project that falls under the category of Speculative Environmental Futures. 

Criteria for Selection: A research project that will increase knowledge about topics and themes of importance to Speculative Environmental Futures Studies; originality and significance of research for the field; and clarity and strength of the research plan, design, and methodology.

Eligibility: Applicants must be registered UCSD graduate students in the Literature or Ethnic Studies Departments during Winter 2024 and Spring 2024. In addition to advancing their research and/or writing, SEFC Research Grant Awardees are expected to: attend at least one SEFC event in either Winter or Spring 2024 and participate in the 2024 SEFC Graduate Seminar, which will convene once in Spring 2024.

To apply please complete and submit an application by the due date to Professor Shelley Streeby, sstreeby@ucsd.edu; Professor Christopher Perreira at chperreira@ucsd.edu; and Professor Joo Ok Kim at profkim@ucsd.edu. In the email, please send a combined PDF with the following materials: Project description (no more than 1200 words), including timetable for completion; Curriculum vitae; and UCSD transcript (unofficial).  

About the Speculative Environmental Futures Collective:

Dystopian visions of disastrous futures, a ruined planet, racial conflict, and polarizing global inequalities are ubiquitous today in popular culture and policy predictions. At the same time, writers, scholars, activists, and theorists in the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms--including literature, art, and theory--to create more just worlds and futures. Building on the successful work of the Speculative Futures Collective at UC San Diego from 2018-2021, we are currently expanding our project of collaborating to imagine socially just environments and ecologies that we began with an earlier series of symposia and research projects. The “speculative” is an important framework for us because it pushes beyond the limits of genre categories such as science fiction, which tend to draw tighter boundaries and sometimes exclude contributions by people of color and Indigenous people by applying overly narrow definitions and historical understandings of what counts as science. In doing this work, we are also inspired by a large body of scholarship on speculative environmental literatures, cultures, and movements, some of which has come out of our own UCSD formation. We intend to focus on speculative forms that create affiliations and networks of care in the face of violent forms of speculation that intensify environmental inequalities faced by communities of color and Indigenous peoples. The speculative is a useful category precisely because it is less defined by boundary-making around the term “science,” stretching to encompass related modes such as fantasy and horror, forms of knowledge in excess of white Western science, and the rich ongoing and historical work created by women, Indigenous people, and people of color. Collaborating across campuses and communities, we wish to deepen over a three-year period the work we have already begun to seed significant undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research in collaboration with campus partners and communities in Environmental Humanities that intersects with Literature, Ethnic Studies, and Indigenous Studies to imagine and help build more just environmental and ecological futures.