Current calls for grant and award applications.
Active Grants & Awards
Current calls for grant and award applications.
We are pleased to announce this year’s Advancing Cultural Evolution grants focusing on supporting curricular development. These are part of the Advancing Cultural Evolution (ACE) funding initiative which runs thanks to a generous donation from Eric and Peggy Peterson. The awards will run from 2023-2027 and help support and increase the global reach of cultural evolution research by supporting early career researchers, outreach efforts, and capacity building in Low-and-Middle Income countries.
Goal: The ACE Curricular Awards aim to improve the quality, accessibility and uptake of cultural evolution course materials worldwide.
Overview: The ACE Curricular Awards is a two-tiered grant program to build and disseminate high-quality educational resources in cultural evolution. The Awards will develop a global open access repository of expert-designed cultural evolution course materials and empower early career researchers to integrate these in their teaching. The award program will take place in two phases.
• Focus: Recognizing leading educators in the field of cultural evolution and their existing efforts to advance its teaching.
• Eligibility: Established academics actively teaching at least one semester-long course related to cultural evolution (e.g., evolution of religion, music, warfare, technology).
• Award: Five (5) awards of $4,000 each will be granted in recognition of the contribution of their already-developed comprehensive course materials.
• Outcome: Awardees will contribute their developed course materials to a central repository, creating a valuable resource for the broader academic community. Awardees will be assisted to appropriately modify the course material for distribution. This award recognizes their existing expertise and provides a platform for wider distribution of their work.
• Rough Timeline:
• April: applications and nominations open.
• May – June: course materials modification
• June: winners announced
• July: launch the online repository
• Focus: Empowering researchers to adopt tested cultural evolution course material in diverse educational settings.
• Eligibility: Researchers seeking to incorporate cultural evolution content into their teaching. Applicants should possess a PhD or equivalent qualification that enables undergraduate-level instruction in their respective country. Emphasis will be placed on early-career researchers and those from majority-world countries, though academics from all career-stages are welcome to apply. Preference will also be given to those who can dedicate a full semester or a significant series of classes to the subject. Proposals for online course development could also be considered, though not encouraged.
• Additional considerations: We are ideally looking for researchers who are invested in fostering the growth of cultural evolution as an academic field. We will prioritise applications with greater teaching impact (i.e. students, terms). We understand that for early career researchers this may be a constraint.
• Application process: Applicants must submit a letter of approval from their department director (specific details negotiable), a detailed plan outlining material adoption and modification for the course, and a comprehensive CV. To finalize the award and disburse any associated funds, awardees are required to submit a post-teaching report demonstrating the impact of their course.
• Resource: Applicants will use the course materials developed in Phase 1, accessible through the program’s repository.
• Award: Ten (10) awards of $2,000 each will be granted to support the integration of cultural evolution content into existing or new courses.
• Outcome: Expansion of cultural evolution education through the dissemination of established materials, fostering innovative teaching practices and empowering the next generation of educators. Awardees will be given the opportunity to interact with winners of Phase 1.
• Rough Timeline:
• July: applications open
• August: announcement of awards
• Sept – May: teaching with materials
• May 2026: teaching impact reports due
• June 2026: winners announced
Conference Year Awards
Awards are given to CES members for outstanding contributions to the field of cultural evolution. Applications open in the year of the bi-annual CES conference and award-winners are announced at the conference.
The Cultural Evolution Society offers the Richerson Award in honour of Peter Richerson. This award will be offered to a recent graduate who has produced the best PhD in the field of cultural evolution.
Pete has been a key figure in shaping and guiding the field of Cultural Evolution over the last few decades and this award aims to highlight new researchers who will go on to shape and guide our field. The award will be offered once every two years thanks to a generous donation from Peter Richerson.
Eligibility: Applicants must have received their PhD within 24 months of the application due date. Individuals who have submitted their PhD but not yet received it by the application deadline, are also eligible. If you have just missed the eligibility criterion but are interested in applying, please email us to enquire. Our goal is to solicit a diverse applicant pool that allows us to recognize a stellar recent Ph.D. in the field. Given differences across institutions and countries in the timeline between submission and conferring of degree, we wish to be flexible about the stipulated 24 month time period.
Previous applicants and finalists can re-apply as long as they meet the eligibility criteria.
Applicants do not need to be current dues paying members of CES in order to apply.
Award: The recipient will receive a $300 award, a three-year society membership, and a waiver of registration fees for the upcoming Cultural Evolution Society conference. The award recipient’s name and thesis/dissertation title will be highlighted on the CES website and via social media, and announced at the bi-annual conference.
Review: The CES awards committee, currently chaired by executive committee member Dr. Simon Greenhill, will review applications. Outside reviewers will be sought as needed if the committee members feel they do not have sufficient expertise regarding a particular topic.
Award announcement will be made by July 1, 2024. The awards committee will follow best practises in the review process, to minimise the impact of implicit or explicit biases that disadvantage underrepresented groups in the academy.
Applications for 2024 are now closed.
For queries about the New Investigator award, please contact Simon Greenhill, CES Awards committee chair ([email protected]).
2024 (joint award): Michael Chimento, Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and Cameron M. Curtin, Harvard University
2022: Manvir Singh, Institute for Advanced Study, Toulouse
The Cultural Evolution Society gives this award to a researcher who has shown outstanding contribution and potential in the field within 5 years of gaining their PhD.
This award is intended to highlight and recognise the emerging researchers who have already made an impact on our field through their scholarship, or by integrating their research activities with superlative mentorship or training or academic service that has contributed to enhancing the scientific impact of the field.
Competitions will be held every two years in conjunction with the bi-annual conference.
Eligibility: Applicants must have completed (had conferred) their PhD within the last five calendar years. Time spent outside of the academy, in non-employed or non-salaried status, or on leave, including for medical or parental leave, can be subtracted from the 5 year period. Applicants must be current members of CES. Previous applicants and finalists can re-apply as long as they meet the eligibility criteria.
Award: The winner of the award will be given the opportunity to present a plenary talk highlighting their work at the bi-annual Cultural Evolution Society conference held the same year. The cost of travel, accommodation and registration fee to attend the conference will be covered by CES. We do not want to dissuade applicants who might not be able to travel to the 2024 conference. As such, we aim to be flexible in terms of giving the recipient the opportunity to give their plenary talk virtually, or defer their plenary talk to the next conference if virtual attendance this year is not possible.
Review: The CES awards committee, currently chaired by executive committee member Dr. Simon Greenhill, will review applications. Outside reviewers will be sought as needed if the committee members feel they do not have sufficient expertise regarding a particular topic.
Award announcement will be made by July 1, 2022. The awards committee will follow best practises in the review process, to minimise the impact of implicit or explicit biases that disadvantage underrepresented groups in the academy
Applications for 2024 are now closed.
For queries about the New Investigator award, please contact Simon Greenhill, CES Awards committee chair ([email protected]).
2024: Helena Miton, Stanford Graduate School of Business
2022: Nicole Wen, Brunel University London
Previous Grants
Previous, but not currently active, grant opportunities awarded to CES members on a competitive basis.
To help support regional meetings, working groups, side events at the meetings of other scientific societies, and other activities, CES invites applications from members for workshop funding. Student members are particularly encouraged to apply.
Sorry, we are currently not running this grant scheme.
Thanks to the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation (Grant #61913), the Cultural Evolution Society is running a major funding scheme to address big questions in the field of Cultural Evolution. After all, how our cultures evolve (including how information is transmitted, how people make decisions, and the interaction with our biology) is a pressing issue in a world in which our cultural activities are causing rapid, and drastic, social and physical changes.
Sorry, this grant scheme has now ended.
Find out more about this grant scheme on the CES Transformation Fund website.
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