Faculty
The Bobst Center provides limited research and teaching support for regular Princeton University faculty members who are associated with the Department of Politics and work in the areas of peace and justice, especially on projects related to current center program themes.
Teaching. On rare occasions, the center provides teaching support — for example, assistance to bring a guest speaker to the campus or to develop teaching materials. Please provide a three-page description and justification of the request and explain how the proposal relates to peace and justice. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
Research. The size of faculty research grants varies, but in past years most have been for amounts under $5,000. Occasionally, the grants are larger, but the executive committee expects that applicants for larger amounts will have solicited resources from other sources within the University as well as from national or international funders and that Bobst monies will top up other grants. Small requests for exploratory research need not show evidence of effort to secure outside support, but larger requests should be accompanied by a list of applications pending.
The executive committee asks applicants to send regular research proposals, five to 10 pages in length. Please provide a short project summary that states the question the research tries to answer and its relationship to peace or justice, the significance of the question for policy or for the development of general insight into important aspects of peace and justice, the tentative answers under consideration, a sketch of the research design, the kinds of activities required to complete the project, the amount of money requested and other applications pending. Submit the request to the director of the Bobst Center with a copy to the chair of the Department of Politics.
Applications from faculty members should be submitted by the end of the second week of April, for summer or fall-term projects, or at the end of the second week of September, for term-time use. Those who win Bobst support will be asked to provide a statement about how they used the resources. Recipinets also may be asked to organize a talk by a civil servant or civic leader on the subject of their research as part of our effort to comply with the terms of the deed of gift.
Examples of faculty research supported by the Bobst Center include a small grant to help with Amaney Jamal's project on "Democratic Citizens in Non-Democratic Nations: Civic and Associational Life in the Arab World," assistance to Philip Pettit for an essay on "The Law of Peoples," research assistance for three faculty members who work on deliberation and tolerance, and support for data collection in association with Evan Lieberman’s work on HIV/AIDs.
The Bobst Center director and the department chair may use Bobst Center funds to provide other forms of assistance consistent with the terms of the deed of gift on a discretionary basis.
NOTE: The Center’s Executive Committee asks for full proposals, although these may be short. The proposal should include the question at the center of the research, the answers others have offered and the answer you propose, a research design or writing plan (if the submission concerns political theory), a schedule, a budget, and a short working bibliography. Graduate students must ask an adviser to provide a letter of reference that explains the work’s contribution to an advisee’s progress in the program.