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Cultural Anthropology Program Senior Research Awards (CA-SR)

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NSF 25-502

Important information about NSF’s implementation of the revised 2 CFR

NSF Financial Assistance awards (grants and cooperative agreements) made on or after October 1, 2024, will be subject to the applicable set of award conditions, dated October 1, 2024, available on the NSF website. These terms and conditions are consistent with the revised guidance specified in the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance published in the Federal Register on April 22, 2024.

Important information for proposers

All proposals must be submitted in accordance with the requirements specified in this funding opportunity and in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted. It is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets these requirements. Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Supports research aimed at understanding patterns, causes and consequences of human social and cultural variation, including research that has implications for confronting anthropogenic problems.

Supports research aimed at understanding patterns, causes and consequences of human social and cultural variation, including research that has implications for confronting anthropogenic problems.

Synopsis

The primary objective of the Cultural Anthropology Program is to support fundamental, systematic anthropological research and training to increase understanding of the causes, consequences and complexities of human social and cultural variability. The Cultural Anthropology Program welcomes proposals from researchers in all sub-fields of cultural anthropology and research at any temporal or spatial scale. Methodologies and approaches employed may include ethnographic field research, surveys, remote sensing, the collection of bio-markers, experimental research inside or outside of laboratory settings, archival research, the analysis of materials collections and extant data bases, mathematical and computational modeling and other research tools as appropriate for the proposed research. The overarching research goals should be to produce empirically grounded findings that will be generalizable beyond particular case studies and contribute to building a more robust anthropological science of human society and culture.

The U.S. National Science Foundation's mandate is to support basic scientific research. Basic research in cultural anthropology means theory-generating and theory-testing research that creates new knowledge about human culture and society. Therefore, the Cultural Anthropology Program cannot support research that takes as its primary objective improved clinical practice, applied policy or other immediate application. Research that seeks to advance scientific cultural anthropological theories in a way that advances use-inspired objectives may be supported, but the theory-advancing objectives must be clearly at the center of the proposal. A proposal to use anthropological methods and approaches only to find solutions to social, medical or other problems without specifically proposing to make a theory-testing or theory-expanding contribution to anthropological science will be returned without review.

Program contacts

Name Email Phone Organization
Jeffrey W. Mantz
jmantz@nsf.gov (703) 292-7783 SBE/BCS
Tarini Bedi
Program Director
tbedi@nsf.gov (703) 292-8499 SBE/BCS
Jeremy Koster
Program Director
jkoster@nsf.gov (703) 292-8740 SBE/BCS
Brittiney Cleveland
Program Specialist
bclevela@nsf.gov (703)292-4634 SBE/BCS

Awards made through this program

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