Current Funding Opportunities
- Research Networking
- Fellowships
- Research Development Awards call
Please see below for details.
Theme Overview
The need for diverse cultures to understand and communicate with each other is stronger than ever, and ‘translation’ is an essential tool in ensuring that languages, values, beliefs, histories and narratives can be mutually shared and comprehended. We need to consider not only the complex mechanisms of translating one language into another, but also more broadly how cultural exchange and transmission functions in a variety of circumstances and periods, including communication and miscommunication, multiculturalism, toleration and migration.
These issues have enormous policy relevance. The UK needs its policy-makers, intelligence services, legal system and police force to be fully informed about the cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity of its multi-faceted diasporic communities. We also require diplomats, charitable organisations, senior military officials and businesses who can engage sensitively with a highly complex global cultural landscape. Research in these fields informs knowledge of strategically significant parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, India, Iraq and South America, and helps us engage in true dialogue with our near neighbours in Europe in government, business and cultural matters. Furthermore, the global significance of the UK creative economy—including institutions such as the BBC World Service and the forthcoming Cultural Olympiad—will need to build upon a deeply informed engagement with cultural dynamics and diversity. In terms of skills and capacity, the Translating Cultures theme will reinforce the next generation of language-based area studies in fields of international strategic significance, and it will influence the development of modern languages curricula at a time when economic success and cultural diplomacy have a great dependency on linguistic skill.
Theme Development
The AHRC has identified Translating Cultures as a priority area. We are at an early stage of scoping out both the focus of our activity and the mechanisms by which any activity will be delivered under this emerging theme. In consultation with the theme’s Advisory Group (see below), the following central aim has been developed:
To support outstanding research that creates a new body of knowledge about strategically significant areas of the world and critically engages with the process of language acquisition and representation. Findings will be disseminated across the academic community and engage non-academic partners to increase public awareness and build capacity in areas of governmental, social and business need.
The specific aims and objectives of the theme are available here:
Aims and objectives (pdf 68kb)
Four key research questions have also been produced to support the development of the theme in the initial phase. These are available here:
Key research questions (pdf 28kb)
The ‘Translating Cultures’ theme will bring together a critical mass of arts and humanities researchers across a range of disciplines to provide a powerful engagement with these intellectual challenges and opportunities for political, social, economic and cultural benefit.
An Advisory Group has been established to assist with the further development of this theme. A full list of members can be found below.
Translating Cultures Advisory Group (pdf 26kb)
Current Funding Opportunities
Research Development Awards call
As part of the development of the Translating Cultures theme, the AHRC wishes to commission a number of small awards. Proposals are sought for awards to support networking and collaborative development activities that specifically address the four research questions posed by the Translating Cultures theme. Funding of up to £30,000 is available on a full economic cost basis. Awards should last for a maximum of 6 months and will be expected to start in February 2012.
The deadline for proposals is 4pm on Tuesday 29th November 2011.
Call document (pdf 100kb)
Research Networking and Fellowships
The AHRC’s Research Networking and Fellowships schemes currently have highlight notices for Translating Cultures. The highlight notice for the fellowships scheme has been extended until October 2011. The hightlight notice for the networking scheme has been extended until the end of July 2012. Proposals should have arts and humanities research at their core, although collaboration with disciplines or organisations outside the arts and humanities will be welcomed where appropriate.
Whilst the criteria for Research Networking remain the same, the highlight notice builds on the flexibility of the Fellowships Scheme to encourage collaborations across disciplinary and institutional boundaries and to allow researchers to conduct research in different cultural settings and contexts. For example, proposals could involve researchers spending focused time at an overseas institution or embedded within a particular cultural group with a view to enhancing cross-cultural interaction, understanding and/or collaboration. Proposals involving creative or cultural institutions (such as museums, galleries, performance groups) that seek to foster cultural interchange or cross-cultural understanding would also be welcomed.
Further information is available on the highlight notices page.
Supplementary notes on highlight, May 2011
As a part of the research networking and fellowships scheme highlight notices we would encourage applicants to consider opportunities for developing international collaborations relevant to this theme. This theme has a particularly strong international dimension and there may be, for example, potential for developing links with China and South Asia on languages and cultural translation. In Europe AHRC is currently one of 17 partners discussing a possible collaborative research initiative on ‘cultural encounters’ which is directly relevant to this theme and the development or strengthening of European collaborative links could be valuable in feeding into this initiative.