Faculty Success

How to Write Successful Fellowship Applications

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Faculty Success: How to Write Successful Fellowship Applications, with Daniel Hershenzon (LCL), Debapriya Sarkar (English), and Peter Zarrow (History). October 16, 12:15pm. Virtual.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

How to Write Successful Fellowship Applications

October 16, 2026, 12:15pm
Live • Online • Registration Required

Register

Are you planning to apply for a UCHI fellowship, or other fellowship in the humanities or social sciences? Join us for an advice panel on writing successful fellowship applications!

This panel discussion will feature advice from past UCHI fellows Daniel Hershenzon (LCL), Debapriya Sarkar (English), and Peter Zarrow (History), who have all been successful in their applications for different kinds of fellowships. They will offer best practices for writing your fellowship applications and answer your questions about the application process.

Daniel Hershenzon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at the University of Connecticut and a historian of early modern Spain and the Mediterranean. His award-winning book, The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), examines the entangled histories of slavery, commerce, and communication across the western Mediterranean. His articles have appeared in Past & Present, Annales HSS, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Law and History Review, Quaderni Storici, and L’Année du Maghreb.

Debapriya Sarkar is an associate professor of English and maritime studies at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023, paperback 2026). She is currently working on a second book project on early modern poetics and racecraft and (with Hillary Eklund) on the interdisciplinary public humanities project, Waterways: The Early Modern Past and Just Environmental Futures, which aims to foster community-driven, place-based, and historically informed initiatives on environmental studies.

Peter Zarrow has taught in the History Department at UConn since 2014. Prior to that he was a research fellow at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. His research focuses on modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history, and most recently he has written on such topics as education, utopianism, and the Forbidden City.

How to Publicize Your Research

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Faculty Success Initiative. How to Publicize Your Research. March 11, 12:15pm, UCHI Conference Room, HBL 4th Floor.

How to Publicize Your Research

An information session for humanities and social science faculty

Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Tom Breen, Kim Phillips, and Emily Zangari from UConn Communications will lead a workshop on best practices for publicizing your work as a scholar, including building an online presence, responding to press inquiries, and dealing with negative media attention.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

How to Write Successful Fellowship Applications

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How to Write Successful Fellowship Applications. with Yohei Igarashi, Ana María Diaz Marcos, and Geoffrey Hedges-Knyrim. October 17, 1:00pm. Virtual

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

How to Write Successful Fellowship Applications

October 24, 2025, 1:00pm
Live • Online • Registration Required

Register

Are you planning to apply for a UCHI fellowship, or other fellowship in the humanities or social sciences? Join us for an advice panel on writing successful fellowship applications!

This panel discussion will feature advice from past UCHI fellows Yohei Igarashi, Ana María Diaz Marcos, and Geoffrey Hedges-Knyrim, who have all been successful in their applications for different kinds of fellowships. Please be sure to bring along the first page of a draft of your own proposal (even in the very early stages) for workshopping and feedback.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to sign up for a fellowship application peer review group.

Register now.

The Strategic Pitch Workshop

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Incubator for Collaborative Grants Series: The Strategic Pitch, A Workshop. October 21, 2025. 2:00PM-3:30PM. UCHI Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library, 4th Floor.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

The Incubator for Collaborative Grants Series

The Strategic Pitch Workshop

October 21, 2025, 2:00–3:30pm
UCHI Conference Room, HBL Fourth Floor

Register

The Strategic Pitch Workshop is designed to guide attendees through the process of distilling a project idea into a compelling summary. Like the spoken-word, two-minute elevator pitch, the strategic pitch is a brief written document used during early project conceptualization as well as pre-proposal activities. Its purpose is to gain early support, connect with collaborators, and garner feedback and recommendations along the way to a grant proposal. Attendees need not have a project already in mind. Those who do will be able to develop their ideas during the session.

The Incubator for Collaborative Humanities Grants series is a program of UCHI and Greenhouse Studios at Internal Insights & Innovation (GS@i3). Our mission is to help those working in the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences to connect with each other, other disciplines, and community partners in order to conceptualize, develop, and implement collaborative grants. Stay tuned for future workshops and news.

Register now.

How to Write a Successful Fellowship Application

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How to write a successful fellowship application. Yohei Igarashi, Laura Mauldin, and Anna Ziering. October 11, 1:00pm. Virtual Event.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

How to Write Successful Fellowship Applications

October 11, 2024, 1:00pm
Live • Online • Registration Required

Register

Are you planning to apply for a UCHI fellowship, or other fellowship in the humanities or social sciences? Join us for an advice panel on writing successful fellowship applications!

This panel discussion will feature advice from past and present UCHI fellows Yohei Igarashi, Laura Mauldin, and Anna Ziering, who have all been successful in their applications for different kinds of fellowships. Please be sure to bring along the first page of a draft of your own proposal (even in the very early stages) for workshopping and feedback.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to sign up for a fellowship application peer review group.

Register now.

Getting the Grant Started: Turning Ideas into Action

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Getting the Grant Started: Turning Ideas into Action. September 26th, 2-4pm, UCHI Conference Room.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

The Incubator for Collaborative Grants Series

Getting the Grant Started: Turning Ideas into Action

September 26, 2024, 2:00–4:00pm
UCHI Conference, HBL 4-209

Register

A collaboration between UCHI and Greenhouse Studios, the Incubator series is designed to help UConn faculty and colleagues in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to conceptualize, develop, and implement large collaborative grants that put your research strengths in conversation with potential partners in the community.

Clarissa J. Ceglio, UCHI’s Associate Director of Collaborative Research, and Sara Sikes, Managing Director, Greenhouse Studios, will be the lead facilitators.

Attendees from UConn and community organizations will learn how to work across organizations and disciplines to generate ideas for collaboration and then plan the immediate next steps in the grant proposal process. Attendees need not have a specific grant idea already in mind; rather, we hope that the conversation among attendees will lay the groundwork for future collaborations. Please share this invitation with colleagues and collaborators within the community and across UConn. Select projects will receive support from UCHI and/or Greenhouse Studios to facilitate moving the grant through the writing, application, and implementation process. This event is part of a series designed to offer multiple forms of support for viable grant proposals in the humanities.

Register now.

Faculty Success: Find Your Productivity Style with Jane Elliott

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The Faculty Success Initiative Presents: Find your Productivity Style—and make everything easier, with Jane Elliott. An Online Workshop. March 1, 12:00pm.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

The Faculty Success Initiative presents:

Find Your Productivity Style—and Make Everything Easier

An Online Workshop with Jane Elliott

March 1, 2024, 12:00–1:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register
Popular productivity advice usually boils down to the same basic principles: capture all your tasks in list, prioritize them based on goals, and then plan and execute a detailed daily schedule. This approach seems reasonable, plus it’s easy to explain—which means easy to package and sell.

But for many of us, this advice is profoundly counterproductive for the way our brains think and work best.

Trying to use this top-down approach when your brain works differently is like pulling up to the gas station and getting a tank full of sand instead of fuel. We want something to help propel us forward, but we wind up grinding to a halt instead.

In this one-hour workshop, I’ll lay out the core productivity styles that fall outside the usual top-down advice. We’ll identify which style your brain naturally favors and dig into the specific advantages you gain from working this way And I’ll share key strategies for dialing in this style to create more of the progress you want.

You’re going to leave feeling relieved, energized and clear about how to make choices that increase your ability to do focused, satisfying and impactful work.

Jane Elliott is a coach, a writer, and a professor King’s College London. Her coaching practice grew from her experience mentoring students and junior colleagues. She specializes in helping smart people stop avoiding the things they know they want to do.

NEW DATE: Fellowships and Grants Virtual Retreat

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The Faculty Success Initiative Presents: Fellowships and Grants Virtual Retreat. Zoom Event. December 15, 2:00–400pm.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

The Faculty Success Initiative presents:

Fellowships and Grants Virtual Retreat

December 15, 2023, 2:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register

Take a break from grading and get your fellowship/grant applications in shape for winter deadlines!

Please join us for a collective writing retreat dedicated to helping faculty and graduate students who are planning to apply for fellowships and grants this winter.

The event will begin with a brief introduction to resources that can aid you in researching opportunities and preparing materials.

We will then have two brief (25 minute) writing sprints, with one 20 minute breakout session in which people can discuss their projects and ask questions.

Writing a Successful Grant or Fellowship Application

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The Faculty Success Initiative Presents, Writing a Successful Grant or Fellowship Application, with former UCHI fellows Micki McElya, Debapriya Sarkar, and Anna Ziering. virtual panel discussion. November 2, 2:00pm.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

The Faculty Success Initiative presents:

Writing a Successful Grant or Fellowship Application

with Micki McElya (History, UConn)
Debapriya Sarkar (English, UConn)
and Anna Ziering (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Oglethorpe University)

November 2, 2023, 2:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register

This panel discussion will feature advice from UCHI alums who occupy the ranks of senior faculty, mid career faculty and junior faculty in the humanities who have been successful in writing grant and fellowship proposals. Please be sure to bring along the first page of a draft of your own proposal (even in the very early stages) for workshopping and feedback.

Micki McElya is a professor of History at the University of Connecticut. She was a UCHI Faculty Fellow in 2021–2022.

Debapriya Sarkar is assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She was a UCHI Faculty Fellow in 2019–2020.

Anna Ziering is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Oglethorpe University. She was a UCHI Graduate Research Scholar in 2021–2022.

Faculty Success: Dealing with Resistance with Jane Elliott

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Presented by the Faculty Success Initiative, Dealing With Resistance: When Research Time Is Hard To Use With Jane Elliott. Virtual event. October 20, 1:00–3:00pm.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

The Faculty Success Initiative presents:

Dealing with Resistance: When Research Time Is Hard to Use

with Jane Elliott

October 20, 2023, 1:00–3:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register
From single hours carved out of the teaching week to hard-won sabbatical leaves, finding time for research can feel like an achievement in itself for most academics. Because we strive and strategize to create this time, it’s particularly frustrating when we still can’t seem to use it the way we want. At the very moment we finally have the brain space to start reading or writing, we often find ourselves doing something else instead.

If you’ve experienced this dynamic, you know it can feel almost like an out-of-body experience. One minute, you’re reviewing the chapter outline you drafted months ago, the next you’re in your email replying to a message about committee work that could definitely wait.

Although this dynamic feels mysterious, what’s actually happening is very concrete and technical. There’s a specific feedback loop that gets created between our sense of how precious and rare this time is, and our resistance to using it fully. It comes down to the expectations, thoughts and feelings we bring to these moments—all of which can be changed.

In this workshop, I’m going to explain exactly how this feedback loop gets activated, what its component parts are, and how to dismantle them so you can use your research time with ease. Although you won’t need to share any of your personal reflections with the group if you don’t want to, you will have time to practice with tools and bank some progress in real time. Along the way, you’ll learn:

  • Why this resistance can’t be resolved via time-management techniques (spoiler alert: it’s not because you’re not trying hard enough!)
  • How the perception of time-scarcity and urgency actually create resistance
  • When enforcing strict research goals backfires and why
  • Why understanding resistance as ‘procrastination’ isn’t helpful
  • How to reframe your relationship to research time in a way that will actually work.

Jane Elliott is a professor of contemporary literature at King’s College London, a coach and a writer. Her coaching practice grew from her experience mentoring students and junior colleagues. She specializes in helping smart people get out of their own way.