Digital History Grants

Committee

Heather Lee  (2025-2030), Digital History Officer and Chair

Sylvia Fernandez Quintanilla (2025-2030)

Vivian Yan Gonzales (2025-2030)

Bryan Winston (2025-2030) Executive Board Representative

Qing Liu (2026-31)

Award Details

The Immigration and Ethnic History Society (IEHS) invites submissions for two (2) awards, up to $2,000 each, to support graduate students and early-career scholars seeking to develop or engage with historically grounded digital scholarship connected to migration history and related fields. The IEHS aims to support projects that explore how digital history can be a transformative tool in researching, teaching, and making migration history more accessible to scholars and the public.

Priority will be given to projects that use innovative digital methods while remaining clearly grounded in historical questions, and that demonstrate feasibility, sustainability, and usefulness to the scholarly community, and potential for broader public engagement. 

Eligibility

Applicants must be currently enrolled graduate students and early-career scholars (within five years of completing the graduate degree) who are IEHS members. The IEHS offers a year of free membership to graduate students who are unable to afford membership at the student rate. Please visit the IEHS’s membership page for additional information.

Grant Criteria

• Methodological: Proposals that introduce new digital methods, tools, or technologies to the study of historical subjects will be prioritized. The committee will assess the originality of these approaches and their potential to significantly enhance historical research, analysis, or dissemination.
• Feasibility: Projects must demonstrate clear feasibility in terms of timeline, budget, and resources. Applicants should provide a detailed plan showing how the project can be successfully completed within the proposed timeframe and with the available resources.
• Proof of Concept: Proposals that demonstrate the viability of applying digital methods to historical research will be viewed favorably. This may include evidence of initial findings that show the project is on solid ground and has a strong likelihood of success.
• Experience: Preference will be given to applicants who either have relevant experience in digital scholarship or have clearly identified the skills and resources needed to successfully implement the project.
• Usefulness to the Scholarly Public: Projects that include open-access resources, tools, or data sets, or that have a public-facing element aimed at engaging a wider audience, will be looked upon favorably.
• Ethics and Responsibility: Proposals must address ethical considerations appropriate to digital historical work. This includes, where applicable, data protection and privacy, copyright and fair use, informed consent, IRB requirements, responsible use of AI or computational tools, and long-term stewardship of materials. Projects involving vulnerable populations must clearly articulate safeguards and demonstrate awareness of ethical obligations.

Possible Projects

• Supporting data entry and digitization efforts
• Building tools or resources aimed at public engagement and open access
• Attending digital skill-building workshops and conferences
• Applying algorithmic and computational analysis to immigration data
• Developing digital publications, archives, or exhibits
• Conducting digital mapping and geospatial analysis
• Creating media-rich narratives or interactive digital content

Awardee Obligations

Grant awardees will be required to:

• Acknowledge the IEHS as the funder in all publications, conference presentations, and other outputs related to the funded work.
• Write a “Not from Here” blog post about their grant-funded work or, where feasible, present as part of an online, IEHS-sponsored panel.
• Provide a mid-year review (due in February 2027) addressing feedback from the committee.

The IEHS may organize events for awardees to share the outcomes and lessons learned from their projects. These events aim to foster broader engagement with digital history methods and tools. While participation is entirely voluntary, it is strongly encouraged.

Application Materials

Application Materials

Applicants should submit a CV accompanied by a proposal to seedgrants@iehs.org no later than August 1, 2026. Proposals should be no longer than two single-spaced pages and include:

1. An overview of the project, and an explanation of how the project engages with and adds to current scholarship on migration history and related fields.
2. An explanation of how funding will support activities and projects that connect migration history to digital history.
3. A discussion of how the project engages with digital history methodologies, audiences and practice.
4. Current state of the project, work plan and project timeline, sustainability plan (e.g. long-term hosting, server storage, etc., if applicable) and next steps (how this incubation grant is a steppingstone toward the next stage of the project); and,
5. A budget that details how the funds will be used (funds will be allocated according to this budget request and cannot exceed $2,000).

Questions should be sent to Dr. Heather Lee (heatherruthlee@gmail.com), chair of the selection committee. Notifications of awards will be made by no later than September 30, 2026.

Previous Recipients

2025

Kate Motluk, University of Toronto, A Digital Archive of Diego Garcia: Histories of Forced Migration.

This project will collect, digitize, and publish a repository of oral histories and participant made maps that centre stories of forced migration to and from the island of Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Archipelago. These stories trace connected histories of slavery, Indigenous dispossession, militarism, and refugee displacement.

2024

Lauren Cain, Ph.D. candidate, University of Maryland, College Park, and Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Jean Margo Reid Center for Women’s History, New-York Historical Society, Digital Demography: Analyzing World War I War Bride Visa Applications at the National Archives and Records Administration.

Using AI transcription tools, this in-progress project analyzes over 3,500 First World War–era visa applications to trace European war brides’ migration to the United States, revealing demographic patterns, including previously unexamined interracial marriages between white women and Filipino servicemen.

Learn more | “Analyzing Digitized War Bride Visa Applications,” Not from Here: July, 2025.

Brianna DeValk, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Citizenship Taken: Recovering Married Women’s U.S. Citizenship on the Northern Great Plains, 1907–1952.

Learn more | “Lost, Mistaken and Forgotten: The Struggle Over Married Women’s Citizenship in the Heartland,” Not from Here: June, 2025.

Caroline Greer, George Mason University, Sites of Spectacle and Sites of Sacrifice: Mapping the Ministries of 19th-Century Female Preachers.

Learn more | “Sites of Spectacle and Sites of Sacrifice: Mapping the Ministries of 19th Century Female Preachers,” Not from Here: September, 2025.

2023

Issay Matsumoto, University of Southern California, Mapping Relations in Urban Honolulu.

A cartographic account of how Native Hawaiian, Asian, Latinx, Pacific Islander, and other urban migrants made Honolulu into an interethnic metropolis during the twentieth century. Using federal census data, this project traces settlement and migration patterns across time, woven with micro-histories using archival research and photographs.

Fernando Amador, Stony Brook University, Navigating Illicit Slave Trade through Digital Humanities.

Learn more | “Challenges & Esri’s Field Maps in Rural Historical GIS,” Not from Here: June, 2024.