The Humanities Council is pleased to offer a wide array of funding opportunities for innovative teaching, research, and collaboration in 2025-26 and beyond.
Eligible applicants are encouraged to submit proposals that align with the Council’s mission—to engage locally and globally, to promote public dialogue, and to bring diverse perspectives from past and present into creative scholarship and transformative teaching.
Important dates and deadlines are below and are subject to change. For detailed information, deadlines, and eligibility, please visit the Council’s funding page.
Innovation and Collaboration
Collaborative Humanities Grants
The Council offers funding of up to $20,000 to help pairs or groups of faculty develop a collaborative area of focus that generates new research or teaching. This may include reading groups, conferences, workshops, planning meetings, and other gatherings to take place at Princeton.
Deadline: January 30, 2026
Magic Grants for Innovation
Do you have an “outside-the-box” idea for a new project or course in the humanities? The David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project provides grants ranging from $5,000 – $50,000 to support ideas that have the potential to change how the humanities are conceived or taught.
Deadline: January 30, 2026
Event and Conference Co-Sponsorship
Conference and Event Funding (Faculty and Graduate Students)
The Council provides funding support for humanities-related programs, including conferences, workshops, colloquia, lectures, readings/performances, interdisciplinary courses, and reading groups.
Deadline for faculty: Rolling basis
Deadline for graduate students: September 15, 2025 for Fall 2025 conferences; February 16, 2026 for Spring 2026 conferences
Team Teaching Grants
Course Development
Summer salaries of $7,500 are available to assistant, associate, and full professors who team teach new, broad-ranging, and interdisciplinary courses. Stipends are also offered for team teaching in core Humanistic Studies courses.
Deadline: December 1, 2025 for Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 courses
Visiting Faculty and Fellows
Long-Term and Short-Term Visiting Fellows (Chair Nominations)
Visiting fellows are scholars and artists from around the world, nominated by chairs of humanities departments with support from directors of interdisciplinary programs in the humanities. Long-Term Fellows each teach a course for a full semester. Short-Term Fellows lecture and participate in classes, colloquia, and informal discussions during intensive three-to five-day visits.
Deadline: September 29, 2025
Belknap Visitors in the Humanities
The Belknap Visitors public-lecture program recognizes highly distinguished individuals in the arts and letters. Visitors spend an intensive day on campus and give a public lecture. Any member of the community may propose a visitor.
Deadline: Nominations are typically made a year or more in advance
Belknap Global Conversations
This program brings distinguished writers, artists, and scholars to the Humanities Council for events that bridge “arts and ideas” in a global context. Global Conversations should have a wide reach and engage a cross-disciplinary audience from approaches that are practice-based or creative as well as critical.
Deadline: Rolling basis, typically made a year in advance of the proposed visit
Eberhard L. Faber IV Memorial Lectures
The gift of Eberhard L. Faber IV supports department chairs and program directors seeking to host lectures, colloquia, workshops, and discussions in the field of literature, especially proposals for innovative formats and interdisciplinary events that might not readily be accommodated as regular departmental lectures.
Deadline: Rolling basis
Gauss Seminars in Criticism
We welcome faculty nominations for the Gauss Seminars in Criticism, which provide a focus for discussion, study, and the exchange of ideas in the humanities. The seminars take different forms, but traditionally they have been conducted by guests invited to present material upon which they are working.
Deadline: Rolling basis, typically made a year in advance of the proposed visit
Professorships for Princeton Faculty
Old Dominion Research Professorships
This program is designed to provide additional research time for Princeton faculty members and to enhance the humanities community more broadly by providing a core group of tenured faculty with time and resources to engage colleagues and students from across the University in sustained discussions of their work.
Deadline: February 23, 2026
