IRAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION

APPLICATION FOR GRANTS

Research grants

1. 1. The Trustees of the Iran Heritage Foundation are pleased to announce that the Academic Committee invites high-profile, innovative and fully developed applications for its intensely competitive grants. The Committee’s membership comprises Professor Robert Hillenbrand (Chair), Professor Marcus Milwright, Professor Andrew Peacock, Dr Julian Raby and Professor Christine van Ruymbeke, with Ms Leila Danesh as Administrator.
   2. The Committee’s overall aim is to foster knowledge and appreciation of Iran’s cultural heritage by awarding grants of up to £3,000. It will consider only those applications that are complete, refereed, and innovative. They must include an up to date CV, clearly defined outcomes and outputs, and fully detailed, itemised budgets (applicants are encouraged to give details about the websites from which the prices they quote were derived, like booking.com, and to justify the per diem amount in their budgets). It would be good to see evidence that applicants have actually checked the prices for hotels, flights and other sorts of travel. The research project must be fully developed, with a timeline; a detailed outline of up to 1000 words is recommended. Applicants should define explicitly the research questions that apply to the project that they have chosen, making them clear to a non-specialist audience, outlining their research methodologies and showing how their research relates to existing scholarship.
   3. For research that requires permission or ethics approval from an institution or government office (e.g. consulting manuscripts, undertaking interviews or carrying out fieldwork), the applicant must show either that such approval has been given or that the process of securing approval has been instigated.
   4. Applicants are responsible for ensuring that two referees send letters of support to arrive before the deadline, with the exception that applications of up to £1000 require only one reference. If other funding bodies or private donors are involved in funding the project, candidates must give full details of these, including the amounts applied for, in the application. Applications to IHF must fall within £3,000 GBP, which is the maximum amount of any grant. The Trustees may, however, at the discretion of the Committee, consider giving support over and above the annual grant budget in exceptional circumstances.
   5. The Committee will assess applications in the English language for research grants in all sorts of academic disciplines, provided that the major part of the topic clearly relates to Persian culture. Preference will be given to applications on (in alphabetical order) archaeology, architecture, art, history, linguistics and literature, as well as subjects of contemporary interest, such as cinema, music, sociology and so on; applications from other disciplines will also be considered. Projects to be supported may include the most varied academic initiatives, from fieldwork to workshops, conferences, building databases and digitising images. The Committee privileges ground-breaking research, which may include editions and translations of key texts.
   6. The Committee operates two cycles each year, disbursing a total of £30,000, with deadlines for applications of 30 April and 31 October; results will be announced before the end of May and of November respectively. Applications can be submitted well in advance of the deadlines; this may be especially relevant to applications to support conferences.
   7. Applicants should preferably be at post-doctoral level. In the case of candidates enrolled in a Ph.D. programme, the Committee will not consider applications connected with the candidate’s Ph.D. topic. Applicants must be affiliated to a British university, institution of higher education or museum. They need not necessarily be employed by this institution. Joint research projects shared between a UK applicant and a colleague from another country are warmly encouraged.
   8. The grant application form can be downloaded here. (Microsoft Word format). Please read carefully the Terms and Conditions of the grant and confirm your acceptance. Please save your completed form as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf document and return by email to grants@ihf.org.uk Please address all enquiries togrants@ihf.org.uk‍