Projects and Proposals Funding

The Projects and Proposals Committee of the American Society for Legal History invites proposals for the funding of new initiatives in the study, presentation, and production of legal historical scholarship and in the communication of legal history to all its possible publics and audiences. It is the mission of the committee to find ways to bring talented new voices into our field, to promote novel forms of scholarly interchange, to support pedagogical experiments in legal history, and to seed new forms and venues for public history.

We welcome a broad range of proposals. We will consider providing support for conferences (including the costs of bringing together participants who could not otherwise afford to attend), scholarly publications, museum exhibits, pedagogical experiments, or any number of other collective pursuits. We encourage projects that seek to internationalize legal history by widening the study of legal history or by bringing a global array of scholars and students of legal history into conversation with one another. We also invite projects that promise to bring a younger generation of scholars and students into the field.

Most of the grants we have awarded have been less than $5000. Ordinarily, we would expect that projects would have other institutional collaborators and/or cosponsors (including home universities). Proposals may come from educational institutions or from informal groups or networks of individuals. In most cases, someone involved in the proposal will be a member of the Society, and we especially encourage proposals from members pursuing new endeavors or outreach in the field. Please note that we are not a funding source for ongoing and recurrent activities of the field or of the Society and will not recommend for funding projects that have already been funded at the recommendation of the committee three times. We do not support individual research projects. ASLH pre-conference organizers should direct any requests for financial support to the Program Committee.

Funds are usually expended in the calendar year following the award. The committee will review the proposals and recommend a list to the Board of Directors of the Society in preparation for its meeting in preparation for the fall meeting.

The application form is available here.

Please direct any questions, as well as completed application forms, to the committee chair at proposals@aslh.net.