Funding (Fridays on) Thursdays Session 6: Planning for Sabbaticals: Fellowships, Funding, and Future-oriented Thinking
Planning for Sabbaticals: Fellowships, Funding, and Future-oriented Thinking
Preparing for your sabbatical can be exciting and challenging. This session brings together faculty from the humanities and social sciences in conversations about how they planned to get the most out of their time away. Panelists will discuss how they identified and applied for fellowships and funding that support sabbatical projects, and aligned their sabbatical plans with long-term scholarly and professional goals. The session will encourage attendees to think creatively about how time away can advance research, teaching, leadership, and/or public engagement. Through practical guidance and forward-looking reflection, the session will equip attendees with tools to plan purposeful, well-resourced sabbaticals that position them for their next career chapter.
This session is co-sponsored by UMass Office of Faculty Development.
Angélica Bernal is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Beyond Origins: Rethinking Founding in a Time of Constitutional Democracy (2017), editor of De la Exclusión a la Participación: Pueblos Indígenas y sus Derechos Collectivos en el Ecuador (2000), and of articles on popular power and resistance, comparative constitutionalism and law, decolonial theory, climate justice, and Indigenous social movements in Latin America. She has been a recipient of fellowships and awards including from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Political Science Association, and a twice Fulbright Scholar (Ecuador). Her current book project, The Price of Life, engages with Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism and extractive capitalism in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She also works as a team member of the Nee Apeneka community-based communications project of the Organization of Waorani of Pastaza (OWAP) seat of the the Waorani Resistance movement.
Laura Briggs is Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and a scholar of reproductive politics in a transnational context. She is the author of four books, an edited collection, and more than two dozen articles. Only the edited collection was actually completed during a sabbatical.
Ray LaRaja is a professor of political science at UMass Amherst, co-director of the UMass Poll, and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and co-founder of The Forum, a journal exploring today’s most pressing political issues. He writes and teaches about American democracy, with a focus on elections, political parties, and campaign finance. His books include Campaign Finance and Political Polarization, winner of the Virginia Gray Best Book Award, and Race, Class, and Representation in Local Politics. He has been a Visiting Scholar, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney (2024); Sciences Po-Paris, Observatory of Market Society Polarization (2023); Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire de Recherche sure les Cultures Anglophones (2023); Trento School of International Studies, University of Trento, Italy (2009); Centre for the Study of Political Change (CIRCaP), University of Siena, Italy. (2009); and a Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies, Collegium de Lyon at the University of Lyon, France (2016).
Christian Rojas is Professor and Chair of the Department of Resource Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research spans applied microeconomics, industrial organization, and the economics of food systems and regulation, with recent work also focusing on artificial intelligence in education. He has held multiple international visiting appointments and was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Malta in 2022. Professor Rojas has extensive experience designing sabbaticals that integrate research, teaching, and international collaboration, and has been active in mentoring faculty and graduate students on fellowship applications and long-term research planning.
Rodrigo Zamith is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Journalism Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of journalism and technology, with a focus on understanding the social implications of emerging technologies for how news is produced, distributed, and consumed―as well as the broader consequences of those shifts to public life.
Libby Sharrow, ISSR Director of Faculty Research, will moderate the discussion.
About the Funding (Fridays on) Thursdays Series
Grants funding can be critical to faculty careers, but difficult to pull off on your own given limited time. ISSR invites you to take part in a flexible, workshop series aimed at motivating, informing, and supporting faculty writing grants for submission.
Stop by each session for collaborative learning and work sessions that will help you stay on track for your goals, or hop in for only the sessions you need. Our registration form offers you a one-stop chance to sign up for the Funding (Fridays on) Thursdays sessions that interest you most, all semester long. An online option is also available by request.
All can self-enroll for the Funding (Fridays on) Thursdays on Canvas, where you will find a full library of helpful resources for all stages of the grant writing process. New registrants can review past materials, and seek support from ISSR for early stages of grant development.
Sessions meet on selected Thursdays from 12:00 am - 1:15 pm - with food and drinks provided in the ISSR Lab.