Fugitive Epistemiologies Micro Grants

The Fugitive Epistemologies Micro Grants program affirms a commitment to supporting scholars and practitioners who refuse the obvious and instead engage in genuine critical inquiry. These grants are designed for those willing to ask provocative questions, unsettle the normalized assumptions, and confront that which is polemical in a high society but necessary when examined through a public health and climate justice lens.

For example, in the current context, the program disqualifies mere declarations—such as asserting “Trump administration policies are bad” and locating the problem in one individual. What is sought instead are deeper interrogations: exploring how such policies are symptoms of American political structures; critiquing liberalism and its complicity in sustaining the status quo; exposing the nonprofit industrial complex; or examining how Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion frameworks can function as shields for American imperialism.

Other urgent inquiries include the social ethics and moral contours of public health leadership failures when it comes to meaningfully questioning power without partisanship. Similarly, reducing structural injustice to “racism” alone is insufficient without interrogating the entanglements of capitalism, classism, and the co-option of BIPOC leaders into systems of power. To name these contradictions—however unpopular—opens the possibility of analysis that is generative rather than reductive. Equally of interest, if not more so, is sharing imaginative solutions to what does an alternative universe look like and a path towards it.

The fundamental criterion is this: stating the obvious, even under the banner of “critical thinking” or “resistance,” is insufficient when one’s morality is still pegged to the imperatives of empire. The grants exist to create space for work that asks: How did we arrive here? What questions have we avoided, and what new ones must be posed if we are to imagine otherwise?

Themes are released annually, and eligibility is limited to scholars and practitioners already engaged in projects that align with that year’s theme. These are not seed grants for new proposals; they are intended to support ongoing work. Awards typically range from $1,000–$5,000, disbursed as 'gifts.' The Center does not provide advice or assume responsibility for tax implications.

At present, participation is by invitation through the Center’s direct collaboration networks. In the future, we aim to broaden access through an open call for submissions which will include further details.