Social Scientist's Grant Guide

It’s time for social scientists to thrive in the grant-getting world.

Securing external funding has never been more important for social scientists, nor has it ever required so much creativity! The Social Scientist’s Grant Guide answers the call to support researchers who are scrambling to navigate the rules, processes, and social dynamics of the funding world.

This guide welcomes you into the funding landscape and gives you the strategic and cultural knowledge crucial for grant success. As you build a personalized funding action plan that aligns with your research interests and career stage, you’ll learn how to
-Identify funding opportunities that genuinely align with your research strengths
-Position your work for maximum impact across different types of funders in the US and internationally
-Navigate political and social dynamics that shape reviewer decisions
-Develop the adaptive mindset needed to thrive as funding landscapes inevitably shift

Having secured more than $25 million from federal, state, industry, and foundational support while working with 5 different academic institutions and 7 different institutional support organizations, Keri K. Stephens and Kerk F. Kee know the keys to success and the pitfalls to avoid as you build your research future.

Keri K. Stephens is the George Christian Centennial Professor, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Co-Director Technology & Information Policy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin, USA. With over 25 years of interdisciplinary expertise, her research program examines communication dynamics in crises/disasters, infrastructure, organizational settings, mobile/AI technologies, and health. She has authored over 140 peer-reviewed publications appearing in prestigious research journals, proceedings, and books and her two most recent books (Negotiating Control: Organizations and Mobile Communication and New Media in Times of Crisis) have won three national-level awards. Her research has garnered over $10 million USD in external funding including 15 National Science Foundation (NSF) Grants, 13 State contracts, and industry and foundation funding. She has given over 30 international and US-based keynote talks, a TEDxTalk, and her community-engaged work has received awards from both the National and State Association of Counties. She has published with over 92 different graduate students, and her advisees have won four dissertation awards, and career awards such as the ICA Linda Putnam Early Career Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the NSF Dissertation Award, and the Waterhouse Family Foundation Award.

Kerk F. Kee is the Virginia & Choc Hutcheson Professor in Mass Communication in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University, USA. He is a communication researcher and an interdisciplinary social scientist of innovation diffusion. His research focuses on the adoption of emerging technologies (i.e., AI, cyberinfrastructure, social media) in organizations, the dissemination of health interventions (i.e., cancer screening, measles vaccine, workplace safety protocols) in cultural communities, and the spread of new information (i.e., news of mass shooting, political protests, natural disasters) on social media in modern society. Trained in both engineering (undergraduate) and communication (graduate), his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Academy of Sciences, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, amounting to over $13M in external funding. He received a prestigious NSF CAREER grant (2015), awarded by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under NSF’s Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed publications, including journal articles, proceeding papers, book chapters, and a book. His research has been cited over 8,600 times according to Google Scholar in September 2025.