Proposal Instructions

The proposal consists of:

• Part 1: Research Project,
• Part 2: Training Program, and
• Part 3: Bibliography.

Parts 1 and 2 should be typewritten in a font no smaller than 12 points, with margins no smaller than one inch, on single-sided, double-spaced pages and should not exceed 10 pages.

Part 3 (the bibliography) should not exceed two single-sided, single-spaced pages.

Proposals should be thorough and written in non-technical prose. For further suggestions on proposal writing, visit our website (www.ssrc.org) and look for The Art of Writing Proposals, a short guide by Adam Przeworski and Frank Salomon.

Although English is preferred, proposals may be submitted in other languages. Fellowship work may also be carried out in languages other than English. In the case of proposals not written in English, the applicant is responsible for providing a high quality translation in English. Applicants should beware that translation errors or misinterpretations may render the proposal far less competitive than it would be otherwise.
 

I. Research Project

(NOTE: Joint fellowship proposals must clearly identify each applicant’s role in training and research.)

1. Description. Provide a description of your overall topic.
2. Problem. Specify the central problem your project addresses.  What are the crucial research questions, puzzles, or hypotheses?
3. Methodology. Describe the data sources and/or evidence to be drawn on to address your central problem. Where do you intend to look for this data/evidence? What are the methods and research operations you will undertake to collect, analyze, or interpret that data/evidence. As the Art of Writing Proposals says: “Do not just tell what you mean to achieve, tell how you will spend your time while doing it…a methodology is not just a list of research tasks but an argument as to why these tasks add up to the best attack on the problem…Be as specific as you possibly can about the activities you plan to undertake to collect information, and about the techniques you will use to analyze it,”
4. Context. Set your research question in the context of existing work or research in the topic area (if any). “Help your reader understand where the problem intersects the main…debates in your field and show how this inquiry puts established ideas to the test or offers new ones.”
5. Impact. Specify how the proposed research will contribute to knowledge, understanding, policies or practices in the field of conflict and peace.

Examples of research areas include:
 

• Bridging of different bodies of knowledge and theory produced by researchers working on security issues in varying countries and organizations (like NGOs);
• Utilizing the knowledge generated by multilateral organizations, NGOs, and other practitioners to evaluate and rethink longer-term strategies as well as to build new theory;
• Analyzing the underlying political, economic, and cultural conditions of conflict, insecurity, and peace and addressing relevant social transformations;
• Rethinking inherited models of the state and governance that are inadequate for understanding the complex security contexts in which more than one type of actor operates within or across borders, whether they are public organizations like UN agencies or private organizations like NGOs and corporations; and
• Making connections between different dimensions of conflict and insecurity, such as the eco-system degradation, migration, infectious diseases, gender, weapons proliferation, war, food supply, biodiversity, global finance and trade, economic inequality, ethnicity, sovereignty and nationalism.

II. Training Program

III. Bibliography

General Application Instructions:
 

• All documents must be submitted together in one envelope. Documents cannot be returned.
• Do not staple the application.
• Do not refer to attachments.
• Applications will not be accepted by FAX or EMAIL.
• All applications must be received by Monday, December 3, 2001