Grants available from the Centre for Global Disability Studies!

The Centre for Global Disability Studies (CGDS) at University of Toronto Scarborough has grants available for faculty, graduate students and researchers in your unit.  These easy-to-apply-for grants of $500-1500 can be used for accessible research, knowledge dissemination or community engagement, improving access for academic events, or any aspect of hosting a disability studies event on campus.

Common Questions:

Is my project sufficiently related to disability studies?

The Centre for Global Disability Studies promotes transdisciplinary research that understands disability as a social and political formation, and ableism as a historical system of oppression with intersections with racism, colonialism, sexism, and classism. We do not fund medical research, or clinical studies. We do fund social science and humanities projects that have a relationship to questions about ableism in the world.

You can see what folks have used small grants for in the past on the website if you need some inspiration. You can also get creative! Here are some ideas:

• Do you want your published article to be open access but need to pay a fee?
• Do you need an RA to update your website that helps community members find your research? 
• Do you need an RA to help you organize an meeting or prepare a letter or video to communicate research findings with research participants or the broader community?
• Do you want to purchase a piece of technology that will help you communicate with research participants? 
• Do you need a piece of software that will make organizing your research more accessible for you?
• Do you want to pay a research participant to serve as a community expert consultant for your project? 
• Do you want to pay a community disability advocate to speak in your working group or department? 
• Do you want your department colloquium to have live captioning?
• Do you need to improve the accessibility in the grad student lounge in your department?
• Are you organizing a campus event on a theme related to disability justice with another organization and need a cosponsor? 

Is my research “global” enough?

The small grants are flexible. Please apply. You might hear back suggestions about how you could revise your research plan to be better aligned with anti-racist and anti-colonial justice; but, if you are already considering ableism as a pervasive, transnational system of oppression, your research is eligible. However, grant proposals for research that takes a curative approach to disability and/or does not substantively engage with disability studies will be returned for revision. Moreover, accessible events grants do not need to pertain only to disability studies, but can be requested for any campus event.

Applications are considered on a rolling basis. Learn more and apply