|
Society for Asian Music Small Grants
The Society for Asian Music is pleased to announce this year’s small grant program to support research in Asian music. The deadline is 23 March 2026 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time.
Grants of up to $4,000 are available for the period from May 2026 through May 2027.
This year, we will award up to four small grants. At least two grants will be dedicated to graduate students and at least one to independent scholars and/or contingent faculty who are otherwise ineligible for institutional research funding.
Small Grants for full-time graduate students
Applicants (regardless of citizenship) must be active graduate students enrolled in the USA or Canada, as well as members of the Society for Asian Music, at the time that they apply. Become a member by subscribing to the journal Asian Music.
Grants are to be used for doctoral research, including fieldwork, pre-dissertation research, travel, language study, and other related activities, and may be used to supplement other grants. SAM small grants do not normally support conference travel/attendance or equipment purchases.
Grant proposals will be evaluated on their project narrative, including a) research objectives, b) project significance, c) research methodology, and d) itemized budget. The proposed budget should be reasonable and sufficient to accomplish research objectives. If funding is expected from other sources, indicate which expenses would be covered by the SAM grant.
Grantees will be invited to make an oral presentation of their research at the Society for Asian Music Annual Membership Meeting (held in conjunction with the Society for Ethnomusicology annual conference). Presentations are not scheduled every year, so grantees might not present in the actual year of their award. Grantees should acknowledge support from the Society for Asian Music Small Grants program in any papers, presentations, or publications that result from this research.
Please submit a proposal of no more than 750 words (itemized budget not included in word count) to SAMSmallGrants@gmail.com by March 23 2026. Proposals should include:
- a statement of the applicant’s eligibility (including residency)
- a project title
- a project narrative (see above)
- a description of how the project fits into the applicant's current degree program
- a description of the applicant's relevant language skills
- a description of how the funds will be used
- an itemized budget
Small Grant for independent scholars and/or contingent faculty
Applicants (regardless of citizenship) must be a) independent scholars based in the USA or Canada, or b) contingent faculty employed at an institution in the USA or Canada who are ineligible for institutional research funding.
Applicants must be members of the Society for Asian Music at the time that they apply. Become a member by subscribing to the journal Asian Music.
Grants are to be used for research leading toward scholarly publications (journal articles, book chapters, etc.) including fieldwork, travel, language study, music lessons, and other related activities, and may be used to supplement other grants.
SAM small grants do not normally support conference travel/attendance or equipment purchases.
Grant proposals will be evaluated on their project narrative, including a) research objectives, b) project significance, c) research methodology, and d) itemized budget.
The proposed budget should be reasonable and sufficient to accomplish research objectives; if funding is expected from other sources, indicate which expenses would be covered by the SAM grant.
Grantees will be invited to make an oral presentation of their research at the Society for Asian Music Annual Membership Meeting (held in conjunction with the Society for Ethnomusicology annual conference).
Presentations are not scheduled every year, so grantees might not present in the actual year of their award. Grantees should acknowledge support from the Society for Asian Music Small Grants program in any papers, presentations, or publications that result from this research.
Please submit a proposal of no more than 750 words (itemized budget not included in word count) to SAMSmallGrants@gmail.com by March 23, 2026. Proposals should include:
- a statement of the applicant’s eligibility (including employment and residency status)s
- a project title
- a project narrative (see above)
- a description of the applicant's relevant language skills
- a description of how the funds will be used
- a plan for publication (e.g., monograph, article, invited chapter in an anthology)
- a an itemized budget
Small Grant recipients: independent scholars/contingent faculty
2024
- Katherine Freeze Wolf (Contingent faculty, Brown University), "The Making of Pamiri Music in Soviet Tajikistan."
2023
- JinXing (Gene) Lai (Independent Scholar), "Preserving the Legacy: Documenting the History of Tamil Drumming in Singapore and Malaysia."
2022
- Shumaila Hemani (Independent Scholar), "Saint’s Children: The Cultural Rights of Sufi Reciters in South Asia."
2021
- Joseph Kinzer (Contingent faculty, Antioch University/Archive of World Music, Harvard), "Arab Lutes and Global Routes of Music in Muslim Malaysia: Performance, Piety, and the Politics of Tradition."
2020
- Brian E. Bond (Independent Scholar), "A Poetic Landscape: Sindhi Sufi Music, Emotion, and Islam in the India-Pakistan Borderlands."
Small Grant recipients: graduate students
2024
- Gus Holley (UC Berkeley), "Music of the Great Tang: Embodying History in Twenty-First Century China."
- Balakrishnan Raghavan (UC Santa Cruz), "Queer Artivism: In Song, Dance, and Archive."
- Donald Bradley (Indiana University), "Japan’s High Lonesome Sound: Identity and Imagination in Japanese Engagement with Bluegrass Music."
2023
- Ronit Ghosh (University of Chicago), "The Mahishāsura Movement: Subaltern Musicking and Bengali Spirituality."
- Tingting Tang (UCLA), "Naxi Folksong in the Age of Intangible Cultural Heritage."
- Mayna Tyrrell (University of Michigan), "Disability Culture and Music Therapy in Transnational Taiko."
2022
- Tomal Hossain (University of Chicago), "Islam, Song, and Solidarity in the Rohingya Diaspora."
- Sangah Lee (University of Toronto), "The Rupturing Voices in the Collective: South Korean Feminists in the 2016-17 Candlelight Vigils."
- Zhizhi (Stella) Li (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), "The Sound of a Good Life: Musicking in Occupied Japan’s ‘Little America."
2021
- Subash Giri (University of Alberta, Edmonton), "Traditional Music for Cultural Continuity, Sustainability and Community Well-Being: A Case Study of the Nepalese Diaspora Community in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada."
- Duncan Reehl (Boston University), "Sonic Sutures: An Ethnography of Japanese Buddhist Sounds."
2020
- Allan Zheng (University of California at Riverside), "Creativity and Musical Aesthetics in Contemporary Cambodian Hip Hop and Rap Music."
- Jon Bullock (University of Chicago), "(Re)sounding Tradition: Iraqi Kurdish Musicians and the Transformation of Musical Practice 1923-Present."
2019
- Hamidreza Salehyar (University of Toronto), "Contemporary Urban Music in Tehran, Iran."
- Miranda Fedock (CUNY Graduate Center), "Listening to Shey nyingpa sarpa nyi and the Tibean Nation-in-Exile."
2018
- Xiaorong Yuan (UCLA), "Chinese Music in Bangkok in the 21st Century."
2017
2016
2015
- Christine May Yong (Wesleyan University), "Shifting Spaces: Musical Interactions, Malaysian Islam, and the Practice of Wayang Kulit in Malaysia."
- Jason Busniewski (University of California, Santa Barbara), "Colonialism, Revivalism, and the Great Highland Bagpipes in Garhwal, North India."
2014
- Yuan-yu Kuan (University of Hawai`i), "Musical Interconnectedness among Islands of Taiwan and Okinawa."
2013
- Maho Ishiguro (Wesleyan University), "Ratoeh Jaroe: How Acehnese Traditional Sitting Dances Transform into Jakarta’s Popular Dance Form."
2012
- Ben Krakauer (University of Texas), "Negotiations of Modernity, Spirituality, and Bengali Identity in Contemporary Bāul-Fakir Music."
2011
- Aaron Paige (Wesleyan University), "From Kuala Lumpur to Kollywood: Music, Language, and Identity in Transnational Tamil Hip-Hop."
2010
- Jeff Roy (UCLA), "Music in Liminal Spaces: Performance in India’s Transgender Hijra Communities."
|
|
|