W-G Foundation Application Guide

Conference and Workshop Grant

Applicant Profile

We will ask you to tell us about yourself and your co-applicant(s).

  1. Applicant and co-applicant(s) contact information. Applicant contact information. This includes your full or chosen name (first, middle, and surname), email address, and other contact details. Please do know that, should you be funded, the mailing address you provide will be reported to the IRS and made publicly available, so we advise you to use your department, business, or PO box address.

  2. Applicant and co-applicant(s) educational history and current position. This includes your highest academic degree, the discipline of your degree, the year it was awarded, and the institution where you received it. You’ll also need to describe your current academic appointment.  Here, you’ll have a chance to indicate whether you or any of your co-applicants are doctoral students and list your department, institution, and country of institution. We will also ask whether English is your and/or your institution’s primary scholarly language. Note that we are currently only accepting applications from scholars with a PhD in anthropology—socio-cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology, or archeology (or their equivalent in countries where these fields are named differently)—or who are currently affiliated with anthropology departments or their equivalents. 

  3. Applicant personal information (optional). In an effort to promote greater equity in funding, we will ask whether you are willing to share some confidential demographic information about yourself. We will remove any identifiers and analyze this data in the aggregate. This section of the application is entirely optional. Your answers to these questions will have no bearing on the success of your application. Our questions concern citizenship, gender identity, pronouns, sexual identity, disability, caregiving responsibilities, your parents’ highest level of education, income insecurity, race and ethnicity, Indigenous affiliation, and how you decided to apply for this program.

Project Information

  1. Dates of the conference or workshop.

  2. Project title. This should be 25 words or fewer and contain enough information to tell us what your project is about. Please do know that, should you be funded, the title you provide will be reported on the Foundation’s annual tax return filed with the US Internal Revenue Service.  This tax return is a publicly available document.  

  3. Who will administer the conference or workshop? Let us know whether you intend to have an institution or an individual take care of meeting arrangements.

  4. Who will handle disbursement of funds? Identify the individual or institution who would take on this responsibility should you receive a grant.

  5. Sponsoring institution or organization, if any, and its role. Describe the responsibilities and degree of involvement of any sponsoring institution.

  6. Location of conference or workshop. Describe the meeting site and explain your reasons for selecting the venue.

  7. The amount requested from Wenner-Gren.

  8. Other sources of actual or potential aid. List sources, U.S. dollar amount, and budget items to be covered.

  9. Brief description of aim and scope of the conference or workshop and its rationale. Provide us with a concise description of approximately 200 words. If your application is successful, we will post this description on the Wenner-Gren website.

  10. You will be asked whether you used Generative AI in producing this application. If you answer “yes,” you’ll then be asked to describe the tools you used, the prompts you entered, the tasks you accomplished, and how you checked your work for accuracy. This information will not be provided to reviewers and will not factor into any award decisions. We are collecting this information to better understand how Generative AI is shaping the funding landscape. We will analyze responses in aggregate to track trends over time. See our Generative AI policy.

Abstract

Your abstract is a very important component of your application. In language that an interested layperson could understand, you need to convey what’s at the heart of the event you are proposing. Your abstract should begin broad and go narrow, communicating the major theme or debate in anthropology the participants will address, then explaining the particular question(s) they will focus on. It should convey the “why,” “what,” and “where” of the gathering, while giving the reader a sense of the “how”—that is, how you will organize your workshop or conference to achieve your goals. Your abstract will be the shortest part of your proposal, but it will also be the hardest to write.  You will need to have a very clear idea of your plans to do a good job. You probably should write it last. [Limit: 200 words]

Budget

  1. Conference and workshop grants do not cover institutional overhead, honoraria and salary, or publication expenses.

  2. For both conference and workshop applications, we expect you to use the majority of the budget to facilitate the attendance of anthropologists who would not otherwise be able to attend (e.g., conference fees, travel, and accommodation expenses, etc). For workshop applications, you’ll need to list the participants for whom you are requesting travel funds and provide the approximate amounts for each.

  3. You may include organizational costs and expenses to run the conference in the budget; however, as a rule these budget categories should not make up the majority of the funds being requested.

  4. We do not fund retroactively. You may not use your grant to reimburse expenses incurred before you received notification of the success of your application.

Meeting Description

Question 1: What is the rationale for the conference or workshop, and what are your aims and objectives in holding the event? Address the current status of research on the topic and theme, the particular need for a gathering at this time and with these participants, and the potential contribution of the event to anthropology. Explain whom the event is intended to serve and how it will advance anthropology’s relevance, reach, or impact within and/or beyond the discipline. [Limit: 500 words]

Please explain the rationale for holding this conference or workshop and what you aim to accomplish by bringing participants together at this particular moment. Describe the intellectual or practical need for the event, how it builds on or advances current research and conversations, and the contribution it will make to anthropology. Be clear about whom the event is intended to serve—such as specific scholarly communities, practitioners, students, partner organizations, or broader publics—and how the gathering will extend your topic’s relevance, reach, or impact within and/or beyond the discipline.

Conference applications. Explain why you are holding the conference now and what gap it fills. Is this gathering intended to connect scholars or practitioners who would not otherwise have the opportunity to meet, to synthesize emerging research, or to catalyze new directions in the field? Clarify the intended audiences and specific beneficiaries of the proposed funding and how their participation, conversations, or resulting activities will affect them and the conference outcomes. It is important to make a convincing case not only for the conference’s intellectual contribution to anthropology, but also for its broader value and lasting impact.

Workshop applications. Explain the workshop’s aims in the context of current research and practice. Demonstrate that you have been following relevant scholarly conversations around the world, that you are not duplicating recently held meetings, and that you have invited a diverse and complementary set of participants whose interaction will generate new insights. Describe why these particular individuals or partners are essential to the conversation and how the workshop’s outcomes may benefit audiences beyond those in the room. What will be the workshop’s afterlife? Your bibliography should reflect your understanding of the relevant literature. The Foundation is especially interested in innovative, field-building gatherings that create meaningful and lasting contributions to anthropology and its publics.

Question 2: What are the specific topics to be discussed during the conference or workshop? [Limit: 500 words]

Please give a detailed description of the topics to be discussed. How a conversation on these issues help you achieve the aims you described in your answer to Question 1?

Question 3: How will the event be structured? Describe the length, format, and structure of the conference or workshop. [Limit: 500 words]

Conference applications. Be as detailed as possible in your discussion of the format of the conference. Please differentiate between podium and poster presentations, describe any opportunities for discussion and debate, and let us know whether there will be any parallel sessions in the conference. How will this format help you foster discussion and debate? Is a publication planned?

Workshop applications. Demonstrate that the workshop will be long enough in duration to achieve the event’s goals. Explain why the workshop’s format makes sense, given the aims and objectives outlined in your answer to Question 1. Will the participants prepare and circulate papers prior to the meeting? Is enough time allotted for discussion? Is a publication planned?

Question 4: Please describe the rationale for your chosen meeting format. [Limit: 500 words]

If you are planning to gather in person, please explain why the attendees need be physically present for this workshop to succeed.

 

Proposed list of participants

  1. Please note that for both conferences and workshops the Foundation prioritizes those applications with the broadest international representation of scholars. We are interested in supporting meetings that include individuals who will bring new and innovative insights to the conversation. Applications that include individuals who represent only one side of a debated issue or who frequently come together to discuss a particular topic are not prioritized for funding.

  2. Multidisciplinary meetings are encouraged by the Foundation; however, the invited and/or funded participants should normally include a majority of professional anthropologists.

  3. Conference applications. List the individuals you will fund through the Wenner-Gren grant. Please indicate those who have confirmed that they will participate. If this is not possible at this stage, please describe how you will distribute the funds to ensure that the maximum number of international scholars can attend the conference. Please note that the Foundation gives priority to funding the attendance of scholars who would not normally be able to attend such meetings because of lack of resources. Note the budgetary guidelines and particularly the requirement that the majority of funds be used to fund the attendance of international scholars at the conference.

  4. Workshop applications. List all the individuals you have invited to participate. Please indicate those who have confirmed that they will participate. Give their name, their academic (or other) affiliation, and their scholarly field. Also provide a short description of their scholarly contribution to the meeting (no more than a sentence or two). Reviewers pay particular attention to this information in the context of the stated goals of the workshop.

Bibliography

You should tailor your bibliography specifically for this proposal. Focus on the broader conversations and debates that have inspired you. You’ll want to cite literature related to the different issues that the conference or workshop will address.

You’ll have a chance to upload your bibliography to our online application system. Please use a format compatible with Microsoft Word.

  1. Only list the sources that you cite in your resubmission statement or your responses to the project description questions. In-text citations should take the form of the authors’ name{s), year, and, where relevant, page number(s). Please format the citations as shown in these examples: (Baviskar 1995), (Friedner and Osborne 2015), (Nelson et al. 2017), (Zee 2020: 1068), (Baviskar 1995; Friedner and Osborne 2015; Nelson et al. 2017; Zee 2020: 1068).

  2. Your bibliography should not exceed 10 pages, using single-line spacing and 10-point font or larger.

  3. Make sure your bibliographic references are complete, listed in alphabetical order, and presented in one of the bibliographic formats found in major English language anthropological journals (such as Current Anthropology, Ethnos, or the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, among others). Whichever model you choose, be consistent throughout.