Small Grants | Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity

The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity offers a limited number of Small Grants of up to $1,000 to support activities related to the advancement of the CRE² mission, three CRE² pillars, and the 2020-2023 CRE² Programmatic Themes.

These grants are reviewed on a rolling basis and will be awarded until the funds are exhausted. The Small Grants program seeks to be responsive to the typical resource needs scholars face while undertaking research, exhibitions, and other creative works on the subjects of race and/or ethnicity. Examples include books, subventions, editing costs, research assistance, and travel for research or conferences. Small Grants are intended to help address immediate needs of the research community that may arise outside of larger grant opportunities for funding. Larger grant requests will remain the purview of other grant programs.

Grants

Scholar Grants

Seed Grants

Small Grants

Eligibility

Only CRE² Faculty Affiliates, Graduate Student Affiliates, Postdoctoral Affiliates, and Resident and Trainee Affiliates are eligible to apply for grants under this program. Eligibility is limited to one Small Grant per year as principal investigator.

Proposal Format

Proposals should be no longer than 400 words, including the identification of the basis of the scholarly activity (e.g., poster presentation of research on race/ethnicity), description of the resources needed (e.g., airfare, statistical software license), the event or where the resource will be needed (e.g., annual APPAM meeting in Denver), timing of the resource need (e.g., to secure professional editor during spring term), and the anticipated outcomes should the grant be provided (e.g., the dissemination of research, completion of final monograph draft). All Small Grant proposals that are approved for funding and involve the use of human subjects (e.g., payment or stipends to research participants) must obtain appropriate human subjects approval through the University’s Institutional Review Board before CRE² funds are disbursed.

COVID-19 Contingencies: If the proposal includes travel plans, we encourage applicants to include one additional paragraph with an alternative research plan that does not include travel.

Grant Submission, Notification, and Award Period

Proposal submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis however there are a finite number of these awards for each academic year. Applications will be accepted until funds are expended. Awards will be announced within two weeks of submission. Project funds must be used within six months. Requests for extensions will be granted only for unexpected circumstances.

Budget Guidelines

Budget items may include support for data entry, interviews, data acquisition, access to restricted-use data, travel costs related to data collection or meetings with collaborators, creative materials, and other reasonable costs. The Center will not pay for computer equipment when that computing can reasonably be accomplished with the existing equipment on campus. Note that travel-related grants may require the submission of a travel report and reimbursement of the grantee’s airfare purchase after the conference is attended. Unspent funding at the end of the grant period will revert to the CRE² Small Grant pool unless a request for a time extension is submitted and CRE² leadership approves the request. Budget Rationales should include outside resources (if any) that will be used to achieve the aims of the project.

Review and Selection

The CRE² Leadership Team will screen all submitted proposals to determine whether they align with the program’s goals and will review qualifying proposals.

Monitoring and Grantee Obligations

The Center’s Associate Director will monitor progress on Small Grants. Grantees will provide an expense report upon request. Grantees will submit a final progress report and any products of the grant within one (1) month after the end date of their grant period and will notify CRE² of any proposals and scholarly works subsequently submitted or awarded/accepted. Potential grant products and scholarly works include publications; grant proposals; recordings; installations or exhibits; documentation of conferences, symposia, or residencies; and scholarly awards or honors. All products generated with the support of a CRE² Small Grant will acknowledge the program using the statement, “This work has been funded by the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity at Washington University in St. Louis Small Grant program, but the views remain those of the authors.”

Apply for a Small Grant

2022 Small Grant Awardees

Assessing real-world access to trauma-informed mental health services for historically marginalized youth: A mystery shopper study

Dani Adams

NIMH T32 Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown School

Email: a.danielle@wustl.edu

Access to Mental Health Services
Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Health Disparities
Implementation Science
Medicaid
Mixed Methods
Organizational Interventions

Conditional Visibility: Strategies of Insertion of Afrocaribbean art and artifacts in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic’s Contemporary Museums

Karla Aguilar Velazquez

Hispanic Studies PhD Student, Romance Languages and Literatures & Museum Educator at the Kemper and the Pulitzer Museum, Curator at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA)

Email: kpaguilarvelasquez@wustl.edu

Afro-spirituality
Folklore
Hispanic Caribbean
Memory Studies
Museum Studies
National histories
Witchcraft

Social Justice in our Schools

SynClaire Arthur

Doctoral Student, Psychological & Brain Science

Email: a.synclaire@wustl.edu

Adolescents
Black/African American
Education
Identity
Social Justice
Sociopolitical Development
Trauma

High school mentorship program to further diversity, community, and leadership in the field of occupational therapy

Diana Castellanos

Doctoral Student, Occupational Therapy

Email: castellanos.d@wustl.edu

Early exposure to healthcare careers
Educational inclusion
Diversity
Mentorship Developing

anthology of roma poetry

Rajnesh Chakrapani

Graduate Student, Comparative Literature International Writers Track

Email: c.rajnesh@wustl.edu

Immigration and Migration
Social Justice
Translation
Gender
Speculative Archive
Diasporic Writing
Documentary Poetics

(re)constructing Latinx anthem through the 2020 superbowl halftime performance

Kaché Claytor

PhD Candidate, Romance Languages and Literatures, Hispanic Studies

Email: kache.claytor@wustl.edu

Diverse Parent Perspectives on Genetic Testing for Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Jordan Cole

Neurogenetics Fellow, Neurology

Email: jordan.cole@wustl.edu

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Health disparities
Neurodevelopmental disorders
Neurogenetics
Social determinants of health

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Approaches to Popular Dance in Research and Pedagogy

Joanna Das

Assistant Professor of Dance, Performing Arts Department

Email: joanna.d.das@wustl.edu

African Diaspora
Critical Race Theory
Dance
Popular Performance
Racial Capitalism
US History
Whiteness

A Zooarcheological Perspective of the Early and Late Atlantic Slave Trade’s Social and Economic Disruption in West Africa

Paige DeVos

Arts & Sciences, Anthropology

Performance Disparities Between Accents in Automatic

Alex DiChristofano

PhD Student, Division of Computational & Data Sciences

Email: a.dichristofano@wustl.edu

Algorithmic fairness and bias
Data science
Housing
Machine learning
Resource allocation

The Impact of an Educational Intervention on Anti-Black Interpersonal Bias Among Medical Students in an Academic Medical Center

Gmerice Hammond

Associate Director, CRE²; Instructor of Medicine, Cardiology

Email: ghammond@wust.edu

Health care policy implementation
Value based payments
Racial and socioeconomic based inequities in outcomes
Social determinants of health

Ilana Olin

MD/PhD Student, School of Medicine

Email: i.olin@wustl.edu

Anti-racism
Bias mitigation
Educational interventions
Health disparities
Medical education
Social determinants of health

Joshua Tobin

Graduate Student, School of Medicine

Email: joshua.tobin@wustl.edu

Healthcare disparities
Anti-racism
Medical Education
Interpersonal racism
Implicit bias

Development of a Theoretical Model to Move Towards Equity in Occupational Therapy

Catherine Hoyt

Instructor, Occupational Therapy

Email: hoytcr@wustl.edu

Child development
Early intervention
Occupational therapy
Sickle cell disease

Guanyu Xu and expanding Asian representation in Contemporary Photography

Meghan Kirkwood

Assistant Professor, Sam Fox School/Visual Arts

Email: meghan.kirkwood@wustl.edu

Natural resources
Landscape photography
South Africa

measuring stereotypes via text

Messi Lee

PhD Student, Division of Computational and Data Sciences

Email: hojunlee@wustl.edu

Language
Machine Learning
Quantitative Methods
Stereotyping and Prejudice

Ugly White People

Stephanie Li

Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English

Email: stephanie.li@wustl.edu

American Literature
Blackness
Gender and Sexuality
Popular and Political Culture
Racial Representations
Whiteness

The Relationship Between State Violence, Trust in Government, and Vaccine Uptake

Caitlin McMurtry

Assistant Professor, Brown School

Email: mcmurtry@wustl.edu

Firearm Deregulation
Health Disparities
Health Politics
Racial/Ethnic Discrimination
Policing

Michael Esposito

Assistant Professor, Sociology

Email: michaele@wustl.edu

Population Health
Race and Ethnicity
Statistical Methodology
Social/Spatial Context

The Plantation Imagination: Studies in Salt, Oil, and Sugar

Robin McDowell

Assistant Professor, African and African American Studies

Email: r.mcdowell@wustl.edu

Black Ecology
Black Geographies
Design Methods
Environmental Racism
Louisiana
Racial capitalism
History of U.S. Slavery

Constructing the Racial “Other”: Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

Mabel Morana

William H. Gass Professor of Arts and Sciences; Director of Latin American Studies Program

Email: moranamabel@gmail.com

Critical Race and Cultural Studies in Latin American cultures
Migration and Borders
Race and the Nation
Race in Modernity

AI-Transcription of Manuscript Court Records for “The Color of Bankruptcy”

Rafael Pardo

Walter D. Coles Professor of Law, School of Law

Email: pardo@wustl.edu

Bankruptcy
Commercial Law
Contracts
Courts and Judges
Legal History
Race and the Law
Slavery

The Ugly Caribbean: Caribbean Writers and the Rejection of Paradise

Crystal Paine

Graduate Student, English and American Literature

Email: c.payne@wustl.edu

Black diaspora
Border Theory
Caribbean Studies
Exile
Hemispheric American Studies
Migration and movement
Postcolonial theory

The State of Pediatric Neurosurgery Disparities Research

Sangami Pugazenthi

School of Medicine

Email: s.pugazenthi@wustl.edu

Health disparities
Social determinants of health
Medical Specialty Decision Making
Perceptions of Neurosurgery

“Negra, criolla, horra, morena y ladina”: Black Women’s Agency as Legal Witnesses in Seventeenth-Century Lima

Juan Manuel Ramírez Velázquez

PhD Candidate, Romance Languages and Literatures

Email: ramirej@wustl.edu

Disrupting Perceptions of Colorblindness as the Norm: Children’s Talk About Race

Grace Reid

PhD Candidate, Psychological & Brain Sciences; Chancellor’s Fellow

Email: reid.g@wustl.edu

Developmental Psychology
Intersectionality
Race
Social Cognition

How Civic Education Mitigates and Exacerbates Outgroup Discrimination

Jeremy Siow

Graduate Student, Political Science

Email: wsiow@wustl.edu

Comparative Politics
Political Socialization
Southeast Asia Politics
Ethnic and Race Politics
Education Policy
Quantitative Methods

Gendering Energopoetics: Violence and Symbiotic Bodies

Francisco Tijerina

Graduate Student, Romance Languages and Literatures/Hispanic Studies

Email: francisco@wustl.edu

Contemporary
Energy
Extractivism
Latin America
Literature
Minerals
Oil

sarita sundar: Archival research & cross-cultural design dialogues

Aggie Toppins

Associate Professor & Chair, Sam Fox School/College of Art/Design

Email: a.r.toppins@wustl.edu

Design
Social History
Critical Historiography
Representation
Semiotics
Intersectional Feminism
Racial Capitalism

Intersections: A Workshop on Black and Indigenous Sound in the Early Atlantic World

Miguel A Valerio

Assistant Professor of Spanish

Email: m.a.valerio@wustl.edu

Africans and Afro-descendants in colonial Latin America literature and culture
Africans and Afro-descendants in the Mediterranean
Africans and Afro-descendants in Renaissance and Baroque literature and culture
Black confraternities in the Iberian Empires
Renaissance and Baroque festival culture
Funeral rituals among black confraternities
Afro-Latin American literature and culture
The history of race and racism
Identity formation

Activism as a Life Direction: Understanding How Purpose Motivates Activists

Megan Wilson

Graduate Student, Psychological & Brain Sciences

Email: meganwilson@wustl.edu

Activism
Discrimination
Health disparities
Intergenerational discrimination
Purpose in life

2021 Small Grant Awardees

Filipino American Identity beyond Southern California

Cilka Bidwell

PhD Student, Sociology

Children of Immigrants
Filipino Americans
Intimate Partnerships

Gaps in Medical Training for Eating Disorders: A Nationwide Survey

Tashalee Brown

Fellow, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Madeline Owens Jansen

Resident Physician, School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry

The Object Selving of Laura Aguilar: Queer Chicana Opacity and the Archive Prosthetic

Jay Buchanan

Graduate Student, Art History and Archaeology

Email: buchanan.james.g@gmail.com

Critical poetics
Feminist and queer theory
Network aesthetics
Modern and contemporary art
Political history (US and Latin America since 1850)
Queer-of-color critique