Seed grants are offered to support interdisciplinary, multi-career-stage research teams involving faculty, postdoctoral fellows and students on projects that deepen understanding of the causes, consequences and potential solutions to inequality across social, educational, economic, political, carceral, environmental and health-related domains.
2027 Research Grants
The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity invites proposals for seed grants that advance rigorous, innovative research on race, inequality and society. This funding opportunity supports projects that deepen understanding of the causes, consequences and potential solutions to inequality across social, educational, economic, political, carceral and health-related domains.
The Cook Center is especially interested in projects that examine how racial inequality is produced, experienced, measured, reproduced, challenged or mitigated through laws, policies, institutions, social practices, economic arrangements, cultural processes and historical conditions.
Awards: Three to four pilot study awards up to $50,000 and two planning grants up to $10,000, subject to availability of funds. Funded projects should be completed within 12 to 18 months.
Core Focus: Projects must substantively examine race, racial inequality, or racialized processes (e.g., racial disparities, the experiences or outcomes of specific racial groups, discrimination, racial ideologies or racialized policies and institutions).
Alignment: Projects should align with a Cook Center research pillar, a cross-cutting approach or both.
Student Engagement: Pilot study awards must provide research and mentorship opportunities for Duke undergraduates, and proposals are encouraged to include at least three undergraduate students. Engaging graduate students and/or postdocs is also encouraged.
Funding Preference: Preference will be given to proposals that include at least one early-career faculty member as a PI or co-PI, particularly an assistant professor.
The full RFP will be posted in November.
Submission: Submit one PDF to cookcenter@duke.edu by January 8, 2027, at 5:00 p.m. ET.
Decision and Funds: Funding decisions will be made shortly after; funds available May 1, 2027.
2026 Seed Grants
The Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University and the Duke Center for Community-Engaged Scholarship (DCCES) have awarded three 12-month grants for community-engaged research on housing and economic well-being in Durham and the surrounding region.
These grants team up Duke University researchers with community organizations to investigate housing concerns ranging from understanding how wealth is distributed across the city to addressing homelessness in the LGBTQ+ population.
From Our Research Community
With this grant, our team will generate data on racial wealth and housing disparities in Durham, giving policymakers and residents a real evidence base for closing these gaps, not just describing them.
— Christina Gibson-Davis, Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
This is what it looks like when institutions move beyond studying communities from the outside and begin working alongside them.
— Steven Day, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at North Carolina Central University