January 26, 2022

The Ministry of Education Tier 1 Grants, administered by the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, have 2 to 3 calls every financial year. The application is open to all tenure track faculty members and the grant supports projects in the social sciences and humanities with a total project value of below S$180,000 over three years. The next grant call closes on 4 March 2022. Learn more about the grant at FASS Research Intranet.

Assistant Professor Alex Mitchell (NUS Department of Communications and New Media) recently spoke to us about his two T1 grants and how they helped him pursue his research goals.

Dr Mitchell’s first Tier 1 grant, “Exploring ‘Literary’ Devices for Poetic Interactivity”, explored the ways that the design of interactivity in games and interactive art can be used to create an aesthetic response in the user. The aim of the project was to investigate the various structural “devices”, equivalent to literary devices such as imagery, allusion, and choice of language, which can be used by designers of interactive media to “slow down” the process of perception while interacting with an interactive work, to create a poetic effect similar to the effect of poetic or literary language on a reader of a literary work.

Why did you decide to apply for a Tier 1 grant rather than another type of grant (e.g. HSS seed fund, Tier 2 etc.)?
This was a very preliminary line of research, so I wasn’t yet sure how productive it would be, or whether it would be something that could be expanded to a Tier 2 grant, so I didn’t feel confident either going for the HSS seed fund (which requires a Tier 2 application be submitted as one of the deliverables), or going directly for a Tier 2 grant. This was also the first grant I had applied for after my startup grant, so I was still a bit uncertain about the whole grant-writing process. So the grant gave me the opportunity to explore something new without necessarily having to be certain it would expand to something larger.

What do you think were the strengths of your grant application that led to it being funded?
The grant proposal included clear phases with progression between the phases, a reasonable set of deliverables, and a focused topic. I think this all helped give the reviewers confidence that it was well thought out and doable within the time frame proposed.

Did you face any challenges implementing the grant? If so, what did you do to overcome those challenges?
The main challenge was finding manpower. As the grant clock starts running immediately, and I had budgeted manpower from the start, but didn’t begin looking for students until the grant started, it was a bit tight. Fortunately I was able to adjust some of the manpower categories and eventually find some good undergraduate and graduate students to work on the grant.

What do you think the Tier 1 grant enabled you to achieve that you would not have been able to do without it?
The grant enabled me to expand upon a new thread of research that had at that point simply been a single paper that I had written to explore a new direction. The grant gave me funding to hire several students to work on this, leading to a series of conference papers and journal articles, and an accepted manuscript (in preparation). Without the grant, I would not have been able to hire this additional manpower.

What do you think you would have done differently if you could start all over again?
I would plan ahead for manpower, and have potential students in mind when writing the grant, rather than looking for them after approval.

Dr Mitchell’s second Tier 1 grant, “Understanding Repeat Engagement with Dynamically Changing Computational Media”, explored motivations to re-experience dynamically changing computational media, such as games and interactive stories, and satisfactions obtained from these repeat experiences.

Why did you decide to apply for a Tier 1 grant rather than another type of grant (e.g. HSS seed fund, Tier 2 etc.)?
At this point, I had just completed an HSS seed fund grant, which resulted in a Tier 2 proposal that was somewhat successful, in that it was submitted once, asked to be revised, and then resubmitted and made it to the MOE level before being rejected. For this project I was returning to the topic of my PhD research, with the eventual goal to merge this work with the work done under my previous Tier 1 grant. I intended to eventually work towards a Tier 2 grant with the combined work, but at this point it was not immediately feasible, so again the Tier 1 gave me the space to explore these ideas without the immediate pressure of the Tier 2 application as one of the KPIs.

What do you think were the strengths of your grant application that led to it being funded?
As with my previous grant, I think the well-structured and clearly phased nature of the proposal, together with the reasonable set of proposed deliverables, and the connection to my earlier thesis work, made this feel like a good, solid grant proposal.

Did you face any challenges implementing the grant? If so, what did you do to overcome those challenges?
For this grant there were no major challenges.

What do you think the Tier 1 grant enabled you to achieve that you would not have been able to do without it?
Again, having the Tier 1 grant provided me with the necessary manpower to both conduct close readings and carry out empirical studies beyond what I could do on my own. It also enabled me to hire an SoC student to help with implementation of some of the study materials. This was invaluable for the success of the grant.

What do you think you would have done differently if you could start all over again?
For this grant the main thing I would have done differently is more clearly plan for the follow-up, in particular how to merge this research with the “poetic interactivity” work I had carried out under my previous Tier 1 grant. Despite this, I do now feel that I have solid work based on these 2 Tier 1 grants that could provide the foundation for a more ambitious grant combining both threads. As such, I would strongly encourage colleagues who have a promising research direction that would benefit from additional funding to support manpower, for example, to consider the Tier 1 grant.

Thank you very much for sharing your experiences with T1 grants, Alex! We wish you the best in your current and future research projects!

 

For more Tier 1 Success Stories, check out the following:

• Associate Professor Jinping Wang’s “A Cultural History of Quanzhen Daoism in Thirteenth-Century North China”
• Assistant Professor Juwon Seo’s “Randomization Tests of Copula Symmetry” and related papers

For HSS Fellowship Success Stories, check out the following:

• Professor William Bain’s “Political Theology of International Order”
• Associate Professor Ian Chong’s “Buying Out, Cashing In: Non-Leading States, Aggregated Reactions, and the Problems of Power Transition”

Stay tuned for forthcoming features on FASS Book Grant Awardees!