Asia ProgramGrant Categories

Responsive Grants

Responsive Grants provide opportunities to build knowledge and increase understanding of East and Southeast Asia through scholarship and exchange, with an emphasis on strengthening capacity in the United States. They typically support research and training, the creation of scholarly and public resources, and intellectual and cultural exchange between Americans and Asians.

The Responsive Grants category is deliberately broad, allowing the Asia Program to respond to new ideas and keep abreast of trends, needs and priorities relevant to Asia-focused work in our three grantmaking areas (academic work, foreign policy, public education). The Asia Program primarily awards grants to colleges, universities, think tanks, museums, and other non-profit organizations based in the United States, while recognizing the need to support the growing capacity and increasing desire for knowledge creation within Asia.

• Our Interests

  • Asia-focused teaching and research initiatives, typically for multi-year projects whose benefits extend beyond a single institution to advance the broader field of Asian studies. The majority of our funded work is in the humanities and qualitative social sciences, including projects that seek to reexamine the conventional area studies model and explore new approaches to training and research.
  • Collaborative infrastructure building efforts to develop and disseminate library, archival, research and pedagogical resources, including digital resources.
  • Research, dialogue and engagement with policy relevance, particularly in areas with limited channels of communication.
  • Efforts to educate and inform non-specialist audiences about Asia, through museum exhibitions, journalism and media offerings, and cultural programming.
  • Next generation training and leadership development.
  • Collaboration, exchange, and border-crossing initiatives, including across geographic, disciplinary, institutional and/or sectoral divides. This may include work that spans the divides of our own grantmaking areas, such as projects that bridge the gap between academic and policy work, or between scholarship and broader public education.

• Restrictions for Responsive Grants

  The geographic scope of our grantmaking is principally East and Southeast Asia. The Foundation’s guidelines and resources do not allow inclusion of South or Central Asia as a primary focus of activity, although work on inter-Asia connections may be considered. We are also interested in the cultivation of transnational frameworks, inviting new definitions of Asia, building conversations across boundaries, and encouraging connections between heritage communities and their diaspora homelands. While travel, publications, conferences and/or translation may be included as components of a larger project, we do not support stand-alone travel, publication, translation or individual research projects, and only limited funding is available for stand-alone conferences, or film or television productions. Given the volume of inquiries we receive and because Asian studies is now well-integrated into American higher education, except through Special Initiatives (see below) we are not able, as a rule, to assist individual institutions with the development of their Asian studies programs.

Concept Notes can be submitted at any time through our online portal. Should you have questions in advance of completing the Concept Note, you may e-mail them to Dr. Yuting Li, Program Director for Asia, at [email protected].

Please read all of the information in the General Foundation Guidelines before applying through our online portal.

Additional Resources

The Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies seeks to maintain the vitality of the field of China studies in the U.S. seeks to maintain the vitality of the field of China studies in the U.S. by awarding fellowships and grants designed primarily for scholars early in their careers. More than 100 scholars—pre- and post-dissertation—have received support thus far.

The Luce/ACLS Program currently offers Long-Term Early Career Fellowships, Flexible Early Career Fellowships, Travel Grants in China Studies and Collaborative Grants for innovative and sustainable pilot activities to address pressing challenges in the field.