Undergraduate Grants

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
2009-2010

Application Deadline: Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism will award up to 10 undergraduate research fellowships for projects to be begun in the summer of 2009 and completed during the 2009-2010 academic year.

Students may receive grants of up to $2500. Each student application must be endorsed by a School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Advisor who will supervise the project throughout the 2009-2010 academic year. SAS Faculty Research Advisors may receive research grants of $500, which may be used to advance the Advisor’s own research, to employ the student as a Research Assistant, or to assist the student’s research. Funds have been provided through the generous support of the Mellon Foundation.

All full-time Penn undergraduate students enrolled in any school who wish to undertake research pertinent to any dimension of the themes of "Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism" are eligible to apply. Political, sociological, historical, philosophical, anthropological, and literary projects exploring empirical and normative issues of democracy, citizenship, and constitutionalism in any part of the world are eligible. Applicants are expected but not required to conduct research that will contribute to the writing of a Senior Essay or the completion of an SAS independent study course during the 2009-2010 academic year. Work may involve travel to libraries, archives, field or interview sites, government agencies, NGOs, or other institutions.

All grant recipients are required to participate in monthly seminars during the academic year, which will include discussions of research issues and strategies as well as scholarly presentations on the program’s themes. They will be eligible to attend the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism’s faculty workshop and conference sessions featuring leading scholars from around the world. All grant recipients are also required to give an oral presentation on their completed research by the end of the 2008-2009 academic year.

Applications may be submitted after January 1, 2009.  Click here to download application forms. Applications should be submitted in hard copy to:

Cheryl Shipman
Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships
The ARCH, 3601 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6244

Please visit The Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF) for general information on research and funding at Penn.

Questions concerning the DCC Undergraduate Research Grants should be directed to:

Professor Rogers M. Smith
Chair of the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism
rogerss@sas.upenn.edu
Phone: 215 898-7662

or

Elspeth Wilson
DCC Program Administrative Assistant
wilsonem@sas.upenn.edu

The 2007-2008 DCC Undergraduate Grant Recipients and their projects:

Kemiga Bunyasaranand, "NGOs and Democracy in Argentina"

Yuri Castano, "Indigenous movements in Oaxaco"

Gupreet Kalra, "U.S. Policy and Democracy in Post-War Japan "

Rebecca Karnovitz, "Models of Immigrant Incorporation in Britain and France Today "

Yu-Chi Kuo, "Aboriginal Self-Governance and Constitutional Development in Canada""

David Rimoch, "Justice and the State: The Dreyfus Affair"

Marta Rozmyslowicz, "Challenges of Chechen Refugees in the EU "

Kok-Heng (Geoffrey) See, "The Chinese 'Social Harmony' Policy and Corporate Citizenship"

Robert Strain, "NGOs, Democracy, and the AIDS Crisis in Botswana"