Call for Applications: The REPAIR Lab
Deadline: October 30, 2026
The HRC's 2026–2028 theme, Repair, explores how we reckon with historical harm, work toward healing and rebuilding, and create more accountable and trusted relationships across the university and the Richmond area. The theme already includes Residential Fellowships, a developing Global Webinar Series co-organized with UNC Chapel Hill, and community events (including webinars and in-person events).
The REPAIR Lab will be home to the ongoing research and public humanities work on this theme. This call formalizes a competitive application and review process for HRC lab funding, and will serve as the template for future lab cycles. The selected lab will receive $5,000 for its first year of activity. Continued funding in subsequent years is not automatic and will depend on available funds (contingent on the HRC’s university-wide status), satisfactory annual reporting, and demonstrated lab activity. This call is part of the HRC's move toward a formal, competitive application and review process for all lab funding, a process that will serve as the template for future lab calls going forward.
Priority Area: Repair, Research, & Public Humanities
REPAIR asks how we reckon with historical damage–slavery, displacement, the loss of Indigenous land, environmental harm–and how communities heal through reparations, restorative justice, and cultural memory. The Lab holds two connected kinds of work: sustained interdisciplinary research and discussion on repair (regular gatherings, shared texts, faculty and graduate student exchange), and public humanities projects that carry that thinking into practice: a partnership, a public installation, a documentation effort, applied research done with a community organization, archive, or neighborhood. Community partners are knowledge-holders and intellectual collaborators, not research subjects. Proposals with a public-facing or community-engaged component should name real partners and describe what they contribute and receive from the collaboration, not just what the university gains from it. Priority will go to proposals that connect explicitly to the broader REPAIR theme and that involve an interdisciplinary team.
Repair Working Group
In the Lab’s first year, we suggest that the Lab include a Working Group on Repair as part of its regular research convenings. The Lab Director, in conversation with Lab members, will determine a set of readings (written or otherwise) related to the theme of Repair; texts selected should approach this topic from a wide variety of disciplines and should, in some way, interrogate how societies, cultures, and individuals engage in acts of repair–and how these processes shape our understanding of justice, memory, identity and futurity.
Each month, the Working Group will convene to discuss that month’s text, its disciplinary approach, and its connections to the broader concept and framework. Discussions should be facilitated by at least one member of the Lab, in collaboration with the Lab Director, but may be open to the community, if the Lab so chooses.
Application Details
To be eligible, a proposal must meet all of the following:
- Led by a full-time, VCU faculty member (the "Lab Director"), who serves as the primary point of contact and budget steward. (Although teaching faculty are encouraged to apply, the lab directorship will prioritize a research faculty member or team of two faculty members from 2 colleges across VCU.)
- Include an interdisciplinary team: at minimum, core members from at least two different departments, schools, or fields, each with a defined, substantive role.
- Describe a plan for regular research convenings (including the Working Group, and other readings, discussions, works-in-progress) open to interested faculty and graduate students across VCU.
- Where the proposal includes a public-facing or community-engaged component, name at least one Richmond community partner as a collaborator, with a clear account of their role.
- May include graduate students, undergraduate students, staff, current or former Residential Fellows, the HRC Community Fellow, and community partners as team members, in addition to faculty.
How to Apply
Applications are due by 5:00 pm on October 30, 2026, as a single pdf document to cstanciu@vcu.edu (subject line: REPAIR Lab). The application must contain the following:
A complete application includes:
- Cover sheet: proposed lab name, Lab Director, core team with affiliations and roles, and named community partner(s) (up to 1 page)
- Narrative proposal (2-3 pages maximum, SP) addressing: the lab's connection to the REPAIR theme; the plan for regular research convenings and who they'll draw in; any public humanities or community-engaged component, including the nature of the partnership and what partners contribute and receive; planned Year 1 activities and outputs; and how the work will continue past Year 1
- Itemized budget (up to $5,000) with a one-paragraph justification
- Brief CVs or bio sketches (1 page each) for core faculty/staff team members
- A short letter or statement of support from any named community partner(s), where applicable