Request for Proposals for the 2026-27 Academic Year
Proposals are due May 15, 2026 via email to lbdac-dhc-fellowship@virginia.edu.
The Digital Humanities Center (DHC) and Data Analytics Center (DAC) are seeking proposals from UVA faculty for a DHC-DAC Team Fellowship to include one faculty member and one graduate student. The Fellowship seeks to encourage and support the use of high-performance computing resources in the humanities and to identify UVA DH projects that require collaborations with DHC and DAC. Running from June 15th, 2026 through June 15th, 2027, the fellowship will include a budget of $20,000. The award will include support from DHC and DAC staff, including theoretical and practical discussion and planning for the intellectual and technical aspects of the project. The team will have opportunities throughout the award period to share work-in-progress and lessons learned to colleagues and the community at DAC and DHC events.
The fellowship is a collaboration between the DAC and DHC. Comprising the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) and the Scholars’ Lab, the DHC team supports digital humanities scholarship by faculty, staff, and students through its fellowship programs, events, staff expertise, and workshops and colloquia. IATH provides intellectual and technical support and development for faculty who are using information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research. The Scholars’ Lab is an interdisciplinary research lab for digital scholars and students, providing mentoring, consulting, and collaboration. The DAC is the hub for assisting researchers across Grounds with the management and analysis of large datasets on Research Computing platforms. Its staff has expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning, bioinformatics, data science, image processing, and parallel computing.
To find out more, please sign up:
- Thursday March 12, 12-2pm: What can Humanists do with AI?
- The team from the Digital Humanities Center and Data Analytics Center will introduce the Fellowship, high performance computing infrastructure at UVA
- Thursday March 26, 12-2pm: Faculty-Student Mixer
- The DHC will facilitate a mixer to support connections between faculty and students to share your research ideas, interests, and experience doing humanities research with AI.
We highly recommend applicants contact to set up a time to talk with DHC and DAC representatives about the suitability of preliminary ideas, ideas for budgeting, and proposed collaborations with the DAC and DHC.
Faculty applicants should submit a single PDF application with all of the following:
- A two-page (single-spaced) narrative, including:
- A description of the proposed project
- An identification of your experiences and background that will lead to project success
- A rationale for the use of LLMs in the project
- A brief description for how this project would benefit from collaboration with both the DAC and DHC
- Attachments that include the following information:
- A proposed project development plan for the fellowship duration
- A plan for student involvement and the resultant professional development
- A budget narrative for how the award funds will be used (e.g., research activities, travel to conferences, student course release, professional development, or dissemination of project findings). A sample template is available here.
- A letter of support from your chair, dean, or supervisor.
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of projects and research are eligible?
We encourage teams and projects that challenge traditional understanding of digital humanities (or even what has been considered humanities research), involve ethical and philosophical issues raised by new technologies, or explore new opportunities for using high-performance computing tools and techniques to better understand the human record. A successful proposal would include a mix of traditional digital humanities work and cutting-edge computer science applications and would provide a case study for the use of the DAC resources for humanities research. Possible projects might utilize/explore:
- AI, gaming platforms, imaging tools, geospatial technologies, use of new tools;
- Processing documents using OCR/HTR, while evaluating open weights models versus commercial LLMs for OCR/HTR;
- Working with social media data, including network analysis, text analysis, etc.;
- Processing large scale 3d data of cultural heritage sites and artifacts;
- AI use in web accessibility;
- Processing, synthesizing, interpreting image or video data, e.g. computer vision in the humanities.
Who can apply?
A team consisting of one faculty member and one graduate student pursuing humanities research through any department of the University of Virginia system is eligible to apply. Digital scholarship is more time-intensive and collaborative than many more traditional forms of humanities scholarship. Therefore, we strongly encourage applicants to discuss their proposal with their Department Chair, Dean, or Director of Graduate Studies and secure a letter of support for the allocation of research time during the fellowship period. Please contact us with any questions or concerns about eligibility.
How long is the Fellowship and how can funds be used?
The fellowship runs from June 15th, 2026 through June 15th, 2027. A fellowship award of $20,000 may be used for project-related expenses such as Research Computing resources, student wages, graduate student course release, travel for conferences, etc. A budget included with the proposal will indicate how the funds will be spent, with the expectation that a significant portion be allocated to student support and purchased services, including but not limited to, access to datasets and/or RC services and support.
What are the expected outcomes?
The specific outcomes will depend on each project. During the year, Fellows will present work-in-progress to the DH community at the DHC; produce a blog post on the project; and the student will present a research poster at the UVA Research Computing Exhibition in April 2027.