RBtB is speaker series I developed to support humanities graduate students’ (also applicable to postdoctoral researchers and new faculty) exploration of research as a function of academic career professional development. Speakers in the series are drawn from UNC’s faculty and administrative specialists to convene conversational panels that combine presented information with time for participant questions. This format is intended to help graduate students begin to explore their own research interests in a structured way as well as creating space for humanities graduate students to network with faculty successfully doing sponsored research, administrative personnel who support sponsored research, and other like-minded students.

I have over seven years of experience working in Research Development and funding for academic research. Over the years I have supported many successful projects ranging from individual grants and fellowships to large-scale multi, inter, and transdisciplinary research centers. I firmly belief that the true secret to successful funding is a research-centered approach to identifying funding opportunities and developing short, mid, and long term research funding plans. My focus, then, is supporting researchers in developing, planning, and implementing their research visions through translating funding trends, creatively matching funding opportunities to proposed research, and developing researcher skills in engaging with research funding paradigms.

Most successfully funded projects often start as ideas and interests for researchers long before any funding search takes place. Even if the final application manipulates the research or ideas a slight amount to align the researcher’s interests with the funder’s requirements, understanding what you want to achieve with your research, why it matters to society, and how to frame that information for funders in advance means you will write better applications. Another benefit of long term planning for funding is that it can also help you with long term planning for publishing and other aspects of your academic career.

In October 2017, the Southern Historical Collection celebrated the complete staffing of our “Building A Model For All Users: Transforming Archive Collections Through Community-Driven Archives” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant team. In recent months, we have launched the initial steps of supporting community-driven archives initiatives and programs through our Community-Driven Archives Team (CDAT).  There are many models for community-driven archives; the upshot of ours is that we want to form meaningful, mutually supportive partnerships to build and preserve community archival collections. We provide communities with the tools and resources to safeguard and represent their own histories.