CREEES Professional Resources Forum

Deadline: February 3, 2020

17 June – 6 August 2020
Program Announcement | Program Application Form

THE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM:  For summer 2020, the American Research Institute in Turkey will offer approximately 18 fellowships for advanced participants in the summer program in intensive advanced Turkish language at Boğaziçi University* in Istanbul.  This intensive program offers the equivalent of one full academic year of study in Turkish at the college level. The fellowships cover round-trip airfare to Istanbul, application and tuition fees, and a maintenance stipend.  

PREDEPARTURE ACTIVITIES: Participation in the program includes 6 hours of preparation prior to departure for Turkey, most of which will be on-line orientation activities, followed by 10 hours of orientation upon arrival in Istanbul.

COURSE OF STUDY: ARIT fellowship supported courses are offered at the advanced level.  Class size is limited to ten students.  Each class meets twenty hours per week.  Classes are held on weekdays from 9 am to 1 pm.   They are conducted in Turkish, with informal and formal styles introduced and reviewed through instruction, language laboratory work, and open conversations with teaching assistants.  In the afternoon, students meet with teaching assistants on an informal basis for additional instruction and free conversation.  Participants also attend extracurricular activities including films, lectures, and cultural events both on- and off-campus.

Deadline: January 8, 2020

Grant Details

• Institutions of higher education worldwide are eligible to apply for grants up to $300,000 (to be expended over four years) in support of new teaching positions in Buddhist studies. 
• The proposed position must be a new position, not a replacement for a retirement or for an otherwise vacated position in the same or very similar field.
• The establishment of the position must contribute significantly to the institution. This has been taken to mean establishing a curriculum in Buddhist Studies where none has existed or where such a curriculum was in clear and urgent need of support.
• Award funds should be used only for the new professor’s salary, benefits, and research expenses, not for indirect or administrative costs, or office expenses.
• In addition, applicant institutions are eligible to request funds for costs related to a competitive search for the proposed position. The request must not exceed the $300,000 maximum.
• A letter must be attached to the application from the institution’s president, vice-chancellor, rector, provost, or dean expressing the institution’s commitment to maintain the seeded position as a permanent, tenure-track post after the expiration of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation’s funding, consistent with the university’s policies on tenure-track positions. At institutions without a tenure-track system, the applicant must commit to continuing the position for a substantial period after the expiration of grant funding and must provide a description of how this commitment fits its contractual practices.
• The heart of the application is a statement outlining the proposed position—its responsibilities, departmental location, its rank, the fit with the institution’s mission and curricular plans, and the qualifications sought in potential appointees. The statement should describe the process of identifying the appointee.

Deadline: January 16, 2020

World-Leading Interdisciplinary St Andrews Funded PhD Scholarship

Turning Science Fiction into Data Science

What happens when we treat books as data? Can literary theory ever meet scientific standards? By applying a range of historical and current methods of quantitative analysis to a body of science fiction, this project will investigate claims for objectivity in literary theory. Given that science fiction has successfully predicted future scientific discoveries, the data sets created by different methods of quantitative analysis have the potential to influence not only the future of science fiction, but the course of science itself.

The project will focus on science fiction about exoplanets from any language area(s). By combining the expertise of a literary specialist, exoplanet scientist, and computational biologist as co-supervisors, this doctoral project will be uniquely placed to discover and critique interrelationships between these disciplines. The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Emily Finer, Dr Christiane Helling, and Dr V Anne Smith and based in the Centre for Exoplanet Science at the University of St Andrews. A central question for the Centre and this project is how would human society respond to life beyond our planet? The project will explore whether analysis of science fiction as a dataset, using computational techniques from both digital humanities and artificial intelligence, can give us hints as to a societal gestalt potentially predictive of reactions to real extraterrestrial contact.