SEALIVES Small Grants Program

Two women sit on a colorful woven mat and converse. They are in a room with smaller mats that hang on the wall and contain motifs of tables.

Borneo-based artist Yee I-Lann chats with a collborator who helped to weave the mat they sit on and the mats that hang on the wall behind them and feature table motifs. Yee juxtaposes the table with the mat as distinct forms of power and relationality.

The call for applications for the Year 2 cohort of the Southeast Asian Lives and Histories Small Grants Program is now open.

We invite applications for the second year of the annual UC Berkeley CSEAS Southeast Asian Lives and Histories small grants program. Applicants must be enrolled at or affiliated with UCB, other UCs, CSUs, or institutions located in Southeast Asia. Should you have any questions, don't hesitate to email cseas@berkeley.edu. For examples of projects from the first year cohort of SEALIVES grantees, please see here.

For applicants from UC Berkeley, other UCs, and CSUs

The UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies is seeking participation in our Southeast Asian Lives (SEALIVES) small grants program from students and faculty with long-term and emergent research and community engagements with Southeast Asians in California or in Southeast Asia. We are interested in supporting and training students and faculty in multiple approaches to life and oral history collection that include long format, annotated interviews, genealogical or other multi-generational approaches, film, and photography. We aim to support life history research on Southeast Asians of diverse class, educational, occupational, sex/gender, racial/ethnic, linguistic, and regional backgrounds. Small grants of $3,500.00 will fund all components of an interview project with one or two individuals in Southeast Asia or California.

Please submit a completed application form (downloadable here) and the following supporting materials packaged as a single PDF:

  1. A proposal of no more than 600 words that includes:
    1. a summary of your research project and how your proposed interview(s) fit within its scope (please describe no more than two individuals you plan to interview for the project);
    2. the site where you will conduct your interviews and the expected language(s) to be used in the interviews;
    3. your reasons for selecting these potential interviewees and the extent of your familiarity with them; and
    4. the medium of the interviews (film, text, audio, multimodal).

    2. A 1-page, detailed budget and justification (travel, accommodations, stipend for interviewee(s), translation and transcription (if needed), etc.).

We highly encourage applications from graduate students and early career researchers, as well as scholars from non-area studies disciplines and inter-disciplinary programs for whom a country or region of Southeast Asia or a diaspora community in California is part of their research. Send applications to cseas@berkeley.edu by September 15, 2024 with the subject line "SEALIVES Proposal 2024-2025_California." Decisions will be made by mid-October 2024 and funds will be disbursed by summer 2025. Recipients of this grant will be required to participate in a fully-funded, in-person, two-day training workshop held in early 2025 with other grant recipients. They will also join a colloquium for sharing about their experiences in Fall 2025.

For applicants affiliated with institutions in Southeast Asia—

The UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies is seeking participation in our Southeast Asian Lives (SEALIVES) small grants program from students and faculty with long-term and emergent research and community engagements with Southeast Asians living in various parts of the world. We are interested in supporting and training students and faculty in multiple approaches to life and oral history collection that include long format, annotated interviews, genealogical or other multi-generational approaches, film, and photography. We aim to support life history research on Southeast Asians of diverse class, educational, occupational, sex/gender, racial/ethnic, linguistic, and regional backgrounds. Small grants of $3,000.00 will fund all components of an interview project with one or two individuals in Southeast Asia undertaken by individuals based in Southeast Asia, holding a primary affiliation with a Southeast Asian higher educational institution and/or research institution (Luce guidelines delineate Southeast Asia as Brunei, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).

Please submit a completed application form (downloadable here) and the following supporting materials packaged as a single PDF:

  1. A proposal of no more than 600 words that includes:
    1. a summary of your research project and how your proposed interview(s) fit within its scope (please describe no more than two individuals you plan to interview for the project);
    2. the site where you will conduct your interviews and the expected language(s) to be used in the interviews;
    3. your reasons for selecting these potential interviewees and the extent of your familiarity with them; and
    4. the medium of the interviews (film, text, audio, multimodal).

    2. A 1-page, detailed budget and justification (travel, accommodations, stipend for interviewee(s), translation and transcription (if needed), etc.). Please use your local currency and convert amounts to USD using OANDA. Include both currencies in your budget.

We highly encourage applications from graduate students and early career researchers, as well as scholars from non-area studies disciplines and inter-disciplinary programs for whom a country or region of Southeast Asia or a diaspora community in California is part of their research. Send applications to cseas@berkeley.edu by September 15, 2024 with the subject line "SEALIVES Proposal 2024-2025_Southeast Asia." Decisions will be made by mid-October 2024 and funds will be disbursed by summer 2025. Recipients of this grant will be invited to virtually participate in a two-day training workshop held in early 2025 with other grant recipients. They will also virtually join a colloquium for sharing about their experiences in Fall 2025.

For undergraduate applicants from UCB—

The UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies is seeking participation in our Southeast Asian Lives (SEALIVES) small grants program from UC Berkeley undergraduate students with research interests in life histories of Southeast Asians in California. We are interested in supporting and training students in multiple approaches to life and oral history collection that include long format, annotated interviews, genealogical or other multi-generational approaches, film, and photography. We aim to support life history research on Southeast Asians of diverse class, educational, occupational, sex/gender, racial/ethnic, linguistic, and regional backgrounds. Small grants of $1,500.00 will fund all components of an interview project with ONE individual in California.

Please submit a completed application form (downloadable here) and the following supporting materials packaged as a single PDF:

  1. A proposal of no more than 600 words that includes:
    1. a summary of your research project and how your proposed interview(s) fit within its scope;
    2. the site where you will conduct your interviews and the expected language(s) to be used in the interviews;
    3. your reasons for selecting this potential interviewee and the extent of your familiarity with them; and
    4. the medium of the interviews (film, text, audio, multimodal).

    2. A 1-page, detailed budget and justification (travel, accommodations, stipend for interviewee(s), translation and transcription (if needed), etc.).

Send applications to cseas@berkeley.edu by September 15, 2024 with the subject line "SEALIVES Proposal 2024-2025_Undergraduate." Decisions will be made by mid-October 2024 and funds will be disbursed by summer 2025. Recipients of this grant will be required to participate in a fully funded, in-person, two-day training workshop held in early 2025 with other grant recipients. They will also join a colloquium for sharing about their experiences in Fall 2025.