<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>There is a residential fellowship for Spring 2014 in Urban Ecologies that I thought some Sudo folks might find interesting. Please note that proposals are due Sun. night. </div><div><br></div><a href="http://uchri.org/funding/cfps/residential-research-group-fellowships/">http://uchri.org/funding/cfps/residential-research-group-fellowships/</a><div>
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<h2></h2><blockquote type="cite"><h2>Spring 2014: “Urban Ecologies”</h2><p>The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI)
invites proposals to participate in a residential research group in the
Spring 2014 quarter.</p><p><strong>Who Can Apply</strong>: UC Faculty, Post-Docs, Graduate Students and non-UC faculty.<br>
<strong>Level of Award</strong>: Replacement for faculty and stipend for non-faculty.<br>
<strong>Funding Source</strong>: UCHRI<br>
<strong>New Extended Deadline</strong>: December 16, 2012 (11:59 pm). Apply on <a href="http://fastapps.hri.uci.edu" target="_blank">FastApps</a>.<br>
<strong>Group residency quarter</strong>: Spring 2014<br>
<strong>Topic</strong>: Urban Ecologies<br>
<strong>Conveners</strong>:
To be selected from applicants by the UCHRI Advisory Committee</p>
<h3>Abstract</h3><p>Today, more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in
cities. The growth and sprawl of cities has been dramatic. Just 3
percent lived within urban administrative boundaries in 1800. The
largest city at the time was London, which registered a million people
in the 1800 census. A century later, city dwellers had reach 14 percent,
and 11 more cities had joined the million inhabitant club. By 1950, the
number of cities with more than a million inhabitants had increased 7
fold, and the global urban population reached almost a third of the
global total. In 2000, the top 10 cities by population all exceeded 10
million, with Tokyo at the top and almost equal in size to the next two –
Mexico City and New York. In just another twelve years Bombay will
have grown by almost a third, and Delhi will nearly have doubled in
size.</p><p>Fueled by perceived access, opportunity, mobility, and a culture of
experimentation and enterprise, this spiraling urban growth intensified
the impacts on the environment, built structure, underlying
infrastructure, and especially on the people brought into engagement
with each other. The pace of life quickened dramatically, new
technologies quickly emerged prompting renewed rounds of expansion and
communication, industry and population increase along with further
intensified impacts on the urban ecology and its inhabitants.</p><p>The sustainability of human life and its conditions of possibility
and flourishing accordingly are inherently related to urban ecology. As
sites of disproportionate concentrated global consumption, cities cast
off intensified levels of waste and effluvia. Air and water quality, the
heightened impacts of natural and humanly produced disasters, the
intensification of conflicts and their environmental effects all
challenge the future of urban living, and of the planet’s prospects more
generally.</p><p>Urban Ecologies is a sustained research focus that seeks to explore
new conceptions of our “ecosystem” within these contexts of urban space.
This interconnectednesss and interdependence between the material and
imagined environment and human social, cultural, and economic structures
demands that we think seriously about these challenges of urban
sustainability and the relation to the ex- and extra-urban.</p><p>Urban Ecologies is intended as an in-house residence research group
hosted by the University of California Humanities Research Institute for
a quarter in Spring 2014.</p><p>We invite inquiries and applications from scholars committed to pursuing these issues collaboratively and in creative ways.</p><p>Possible topics addressed by this group might include but are not limited to:</p>
<ul>
<li>The future of urban design and the relationship between aesthetics,
technology, the life sciences, and the natural world; optimization of
urban areas for sustainability.</li>
<li>Effects of limitless urban growth and sprawl, and the impact of the
culture of consumption on urban spaces; use and distribution of natural
resources; creation and disposal of waste; how alternative economies
might be created.</li>
<li>The tendency for poorer populations to take the brunt of negative
environmental outcomes; the “political economy of urban inequality”;
environmental justice</li>
<li>The city as ecosystem, as well as the city within an ecosystem; dynamic movement in urban space.</li>
<li>Life and culture of the city; how people live in cities and what
optimal design for functionality, happiness, and sustainability might
be; sociology of personal interaction and relationships within the city;
changing considerations of public and private (public vs. private
transportation).</li>
<li>Rhetoric of political urban anti-environmentalism, denial of climate change and the impact on cities.</li>
<li>Relationship between urban design and public health, health of the
environment in dynamic relationship with health of individual, health of
the city, how one might conceptualize “health” of an urban space.</li>
<li>How environmental changes might impact human culture and social
structures as well as our understanding of the new relationship between
“human history and culture and the Earth’s natural history and material
composition”.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Residential Research Groups</h3><p>Residential research groups (RRGs) are at the heart of UCHRI’s
activities, convening key scholars to work in collaboration on
interdisciplinary topics of special significance. UCHRI promotes new
scholarship in the humanities by fostering collaborative inquiry outside
institutional and disciplinary structures. RRGs are in essence teams of
researchers, often unknown to each other before residency, and
assembled to work on a commonly defined research agenda. They are
composed of a range of UC faculty, visiting scholars (including UC
postdoctoral scholars), UC doctoral students, and non-UC faculty as
resources allow.</p><p>RRGs are developed through a two-stage process. First, research
topics for RRGs are determined by open competition or by UCHRI in
consultation with its Advisory Board and UC leaders in the humanities.
Through a competitive review process, RRG fellows are then selected
based on their ability to contribute to the research agenda of the
group. Collaboration may take many forms. In communicating across
disciplines, there are challenges of language, terminology, and
methodology for all RRGs. The organizing premise of the residential
research program is that when those challenges are surmounted,
breakthroughs in knowledge are possible.</p><p>Expected outcomes of an RRG include edited or co-edited volumes, key
word texts, multimedia websites, significant extramural proposals,
substantial curriculum plans, or other such significant projects arising
from research pursued at UCHRI.</p><p>UCHRI’s facilities for participating scholars include private offices
with e-mail/Internet access, seminar and conference rooms, a
multi-media room, and a reference library. Furnished on campus
apartments are provided free of charge to fellows by the Institute for
use on an as-needed basis during their residencies, resources
permitting.</p><p>Awards will be announced in March 2013.</p>
<h3>How to Apply</h3><p>Applications are accepted exclusively online via UCHRI’s <a href="http://fastapps.hri.uci.edu" target="_blank">FastApps</a> system.</p><p>Required documents include:</p><p>• Biographical abstract (100 words max.)</p><p>• Proposal narrative (2000 words max.)</p><p>• Curriculum vitae (2 pages max.)</p><p>For program related questions, please contact Suedine Nakano, Program Officer at <a href="mailto:snakano@hri.uci.edu" target="_blank">snakano@hri.uci.edu</a></p><p>For technical assistance, contact <a href="mailto:techsupport@hri.uci.edu" target="_blank">techsupport@hri.uci.edu</a></p></blockquote></div></div></body></html>