Travel and Research Support

1. Departmental Travel Funds support graduate student travel to conferences on a rolling basis. For PhD students, the department offers funding of up to $400 in a given Academic Year (AY) for 5 years. Unused funds may roll over into another academic year. While these funds are intended primarily for presenting research at professional meetings, they may also be used for supporting travel to a conference for the purposes of a job interview or for necessary research expenses (such as photography, transcription, language study, etc.). If a student would like to use these funds for purposes other than conference travel, she/ he will need to obtain the prior approval of the DGS. In addition to these funds, the department will provide up to $1600 in matching funds for external travel awards, such as the ARHU Travel Award, the Graduate School's Goldhaber Travel Award, and the International Conference Student Support Award (ICSSA). Students who have exhausted their non-matching funds and who have applied for, but did not receive one of these awards, should contact the Business Office.

For MA and MFA students, the department offers one-time funding of up to $400. In addition to these funds, the department will provide up to $400 in matching funds for external travel awards, such as the ARHU Travel Award, the Graduate School's Goldhaber Travel Award, and the ICSSA.

For more information on external travel awards, please consult the External Funding link at the bottom of the ARHU Fellowships, Grants & Awards page.

In addition to the Travel Request Form, students will need to complete a Travel Reimbursement Form which, along with original itemized receipts, must be filed with the Business Office after completion of the trip.

All of the travel forms are available online.

2. ARHU Graduate Student Travel Awards also fund student travel to conferences in order to present original research. Deadlines for requests for letters of support from the DGS are provided in the annual funding memo (linked here). Please note that if you do not contact the appropriate DGS for a letter of support (either the ENGL, CMLT, or CWR DGS) your application will be unlikely to be successful. Eligible expenses include transportation, lodging, registration fees and per diem for food, up to $500 for travel within North America and $700 for international travel. The Department will match the amounts awarded by the ARHU Graduate Student Travel Awards, up to the amounts available in an individual’s account. Awards will not be given for travel that has already taken place.

3. The Graduate School’s Jacob A. Goldhaber Travel Awards are intended to support graduate student travel and are to be used as matching funds for either Departmental Travel Funds or ARHU Graduate Student Travel Awards. PhD students may receive the award twice during their graduate education at UMD, once before the achievement of candidacy (including master’s students) and a second time after the achievement of candidacy. Award amounts are between $250 and $400 for domestic travel and $600 for international travel. The application is on a rolling basis but must be made prior to travel.

4. The Graduate School’s International Conference Student Support Award (ICSSA) covers the cost of registration fees for conferences located outside of the United States up to $500.

1.  The QCB Research and Travel Grant is awarded on a competitive basis to graduate students in English and CMLT twice a year (fall and spring). The amount of the award varies depending on the number of applicants and the available funding. These grants are awarded to support student research requiring travel to archives, special collections, and other unique resources in connection with the PhD dissertation and, in rare cases, MA thesis research. The funds should be used for supporting archival research, with some preference toward British literary studies. Deadlines are November 15 (for travel from January 1st-June 30th) and April 15 (for travel from July 1st through December 30th).

Applications for the QCB should be no more than three pages in length and should include:

• A concise description of the project for which the research is being undertaken
• A detailed description of the research to be undertaken, including, for example, the library or other institution to be visited, the particular archive or collection to be consulted, the reason why the research must be done on-site, the amount of time anticipated for the research, and so on; and,
• A detailed budget. In addition, the applicant should have his/her dissertation director (or, in rare cases, thesis advisor) forward a letter of endorsement to the Graduate office.

Please electronically submit alll QCB applications to the Graduate Coordinator, Heather Dias (hdias@umd.edu).

2. The Endowed Summer Fellowship for Archival Work in English Studies provides up to $5,000 to support post-candidacy doctoral candidates enrolled in ENGL or CMLT. The fellowship is intended to contribute toward travel, living and research expenses associated with the archival work, as well as the costs of courses or programs in archival methods designed to help students develop research skills. To be eligible for the fellowship, students must have achieved doctoral candidacy and be conducting significant primary research in an established physical archive. Successful candidates will devote a significant portion of the award summer on site at the location of the archive. Deadline is December 1.

Students must submit their applications via the Graduate School Award Portal (link here). For specific application requirements, please go the Graduate School's funding page here.