President's Ferrari Humanities Research Award

Overview and Eligibility

Gregory Heyworth and his team work on imaging Czech Holocaust Torah scrolls.
Associate Professor of English and Textual Science Gregory Heyworth and his team work on imaging Czech Holocaust Torah scrolls on loan from Syracuse's Temple Society of Concord.

Nominations are invited for the 2025 President’s Ferrari Humanities Research Award.

Endowed by University of Rochester Trustee Bernard T. Ferrari ’70, ’74M (MD) and his wife, Linda Gaddis Ferrari, the award promotes and supports humanities research by a tenured or tenure-track faculty member in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (AS&E) who is affiliated with the University’s Humanities Center.

The award is in the amount of $25,000, which may be spent over two or three academic years.

The recipient of this annual award must demonstrate a creative research approach that either builds on a previous record of published work in peer-reviewed journals or books, or charts a direction that promises a new publication stream.

Nominations and Submission Guidelines

An assistant professor of history, points to a route African captives were transported along in colonial Mexico.
Pablo Sierra, assistant professor of history, points to a route African captives were transported along in colonial Mexico, including stops at a slave market in his hometown of Puebla de Los Angeles.

Self-nominations must be submitted by January 17, 2025.

Nomination materials should include:

  • A statement by the nominee of no more than three single-spaced pages explaining what research activities she or he intends to conduct. The statement should clearly describe the relationship of the proposed research activities to the nominee’s previous publications or new scholarly interests. Nominees should also highlight the creativity and intellectual contributions of their projects.
    • Because preference will be given to proposals for work that the nominee could not carry out without the funds the award provides, the statement should indicate why the Ferrari Award is essential to the nominee’s research agenda.
  • A budget and a timetable for use of funds.
  • The nominee’s current CV.

Email nominations and all supporting materials (in PDF format) to both SASFacultyAffairs@rochester.edu and  sasdean@rochester.edu using the subject line: Ferrari Humanities Research Award.

Funding Details

Scan of a letter alongside its digital transcription.
A project to digitize the letters of the family of 19th-century statesman William Seward involves Rochester undergraduates as well as faculty and members of the community.

The awarded funds can be spent on:

  • Research materials
  • Data access
  • Digital work
  • Travel expenses incurred in connection with research

The funds may not be used for salary support in lieu of teaching. When summer salary support is required for the research to take place, however, up to 40 percent of the award may be used for that purpose, but only with the permission of the donors.

Nominees who wish to propose other expenditures should include them in their research statement; all such exceptions require the jury (see below) to consult with the donors. The award may fund two faculty members working on a joint project.

Award Selection

A jury consisting of the the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and the directors of the Humanities Center, the Frederick Douglass Institute and the Susan B. Anthony Institute will review the nominations and recommend two awardees to the University’s president, who will decide the recipient of the Ferrari Award. The winner will be notified in early March.

The donors anticipate meeting the award winner as soon as is reasonably possible. All publications or presentations supported in part or whole by the award shall cite the Bernard T. and Linda G. Ferrari Humanities Fund.

Contact

Email SASFacultyAffairs@rochester.edu with any questions, nominations, or submissions.

Past Awardees

2024 Awardee

Anna Rosensweig, Associate Professor of French and Director of the Graduate Program of Visual and Cultural Studies
The award will support primary research for her current book project, Whose Resistance Theory? From Early Modern France to QAnon, Parents' Rights, and Christian Insurrection.

2023 Awardee

Llerena Searle, Associate Professor of Anthropology
The award will support ethnographic field research in India and Europe for her second book project, “Home, Inc.: Domestic Material Culture, Labor, and Value in Contemporary India”.

2022 Awardee

Jennifer Kyker, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and Associate Professor of Music
The award will support a digital humanities project that will be publicly accessible, thereby contributing both to the scholarship within her discipline and to greater awareness of African culture among a broad audience.

2021 Awardee

Rachel Haidu, Associate Professor of Art History
The award will support research for Rachel Haidu’s project “Authority, Originality, Neither: Art as Pedagogy in the Former East”.

2020 Awardee

Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, Assistant Professor of History
The award will support research for Sierra Silva’s forthcoming book, In the Wake of the Raid: Piracy, Captivity and the 1683 Raid on Veracruz.