Grant Proposals

The major goal of year 4 in our program is to craft a comprehensive proposal – ideally one that is externally fundable -- for dissertation research. Some students can complete most of the stages listed below during the 3rd year. We are encouraging this accelerated scheduled for all students in the program for whom it is possible. This must be a substantial (25 pp. average) document that explains the theoretical, practical, empirical, and contextual bases for the project. We expect students to begin serious work on this proposal at the conclusion of the exam sequence, during the Summer between years 3 and 4. It is certainly possible, for a motivated and well prepared student, to conduct fieldwork in the 4th year and complete the dissertation in the 5th year at Columbia. It is more common to take 6 or 7 years, but even in such cases, we’d rather see the additional years spent on the dissertation itself.

Because the cycle of funding source deadlines favors proposals that are well underway by the Fall of the year before funding begins, we expect that students will spend the Fall semester of their 3rd (and if necessary 4th) year applying for as many external sources of fieldwork support funding as possible. The majority of our students receive at least one major grant for fieldwork. The University offers several competitive research and writing fellowships. You should expect to be a partner in funding your dissertation research. It is very difficult to do field research – especially abroad – unless you win a major grant to support it. However, nearly all of our students do win such grants.

Pursuing external funding may require extensive preliminary fieldwork (often conducted in the summer months between years 2 - 4, often supported by Departmental summer fellowships or small grants such as FLAS summer grants).

Generally, but increasingly, year 4 is spent doing primary field research, usually with outside funding. Year 6 (and sometimes year 7) is spent in residence at Columbia, writing a dissertation. Because our 6-year fellowships can be deferred in any one year for field research away from Columbia, a student whose fieldwork is externally funded for a year can expect to return to Columbia and take up the final guaranteed year of her/his fellowship support (usually entailing teaching duties) while s/he writes the dissertation. Alternatively, if an external grant is taken as "substitutional" funding (replacing rather than deferring a Columbia GSAS fellowship year), GSAS will "top up" significant external grants (over $10,000) to the full value of a GSAS fellowship plus a bonus.