Ethics Small Grants for Graduate Students
The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society offers graduate students two funding opportunities to either support their research or build collaborations in ways that meaningfully engage with ethical questions. We have the Community Building Grant and the Research Grant.
Community Building Grant
The Community Building Grant supports creating events or programs that encourage reflection on the ethical dimensions of research, professional commitments, and career choices. The Community Building Grant supports creating events or programs that encourage reflection on the ethical dimensions of research, professional commitments, and career choices.
Potential programs could include: the development of a new ethics workshop for grad students, hosting an event about the ethical issues in your field, organizing an ethics working group, among many other possibilities. The grants are intended to support programs or events that will engage the Stanford community and/or other graduate students, but not for individual research or projects.
Funding amount: up to $1,000. If you have an idea that requires more than $1,000, please send it our way. We may have other suggestions for funding sources.
How can funds be used? Possible expenses include but are not limited to: travel costs or fees for guest speakers, food expenses for events, creating marketing materials, or to purchase other materials needed for the program (books, software, printing, etc).
Who can apply? Stanford graduate and professional school students, as well as Tech Ethics and Policy Grad Fellows.
Proposals are accepted on a rolling basis. Please try to submit your grant at least one month in advance of your event/program. For larger events/programs, please allow six weeks or more.
Summer Proposals are permitted.
Research Grant
The Research Grant provides funding to support research activities that broadly connect to ethics.
Potential uses for funding include: conference travel and fees where you are a presenter, paying research subjects, or data collection costs.
Funding amount: Up to $2,000. Proposals for larger than $2,000 may be considered in exceptional circumstances. Students cannot receive multiple sources of funding for the same expenses.
Who can apply? McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society Graduate Fellows, Tech Ethics and Policy Grad Fellows, SGSI Course Students
Application Requirements:
- 2-3 page Project Summary
- CV
- Unofficial Transcript
- Budget Spreadsheet
- IRB Certification (if applicable)
- Letter of Acceptance for Conference Travel
When are the proposals due? Proposals are evaluated on a rolling basis.
Recipients will be notified within three weeks of submitting their proposal.
Funding can take up to six weeks to be transferred.
Students cannot receive funds multiple times from the grant.
Applications for summer research or travel are permitted.
All Grants are treated as taxable income.
Funding amount
Up to $1,000 for Community Building Grants and up to $2,000 for Research Grants.
When are the proposals due?
Proposals are evaluated on a rolling basis during the academic school year.
Who can apply?
Stanford graduate and professional students (Community Building Grants) and McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society Graduate Fellows or students who completed the SGSI course on Ethics and the Academy or Tech Ethics and Policy Grad Fellows (Research Grants)
Questions?
Please contact the Director of Graduate & Undergraduate Programs, Collin Anthony Chen (canthony [at] stanford.edu (canthony[at]stanford[dot]edu)) if you have any questions.
2024-25 Grant Recipients
Grad Research Grant Recipients 2024-25
Blood Donation in West Africa | Jlateh “Vincent” Jappah, Health Policy
Blood shortage is a global phenomenon. There is a high demand for blood and blood products globally, with a disproportionately higher demand in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where every country in these two regions has a significant shortage. The existence of global blood deserts, especially in rural settings, impedes access to critical blood transfusions for marginalized populations. Although there appears to be a market for blood, such discussions draw a level of repugnance in some settings. This project explores the impact of non-cash incentives and/or the provision of important information on the benefits of blood donation on blood donation rates in Ghana and Sierra Leone, West Africa.
Measuring the Safety of AI Models | Samantha Bennett, Philosophy
As AI systems develop at a dizzying pace, there is a critical need to ensure they are safe not only technically but also ethically. I develop a provisional framework using Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) to formalize reasoning about AI safety scenarios. By modeling safety information as dynamic updates—through public announcements of test outcomes and private disclosures in audit settings—the framework captures how different testing approaches affect the knowledge states of developers, auditors, and end-users. This model aims to guide practitioners in evaluating whether AI systems adhere to evolving safety guidelines.
Do Large Language Models Behave as They Should? | Recipient: Kevin Klyman (International Policy Student)
AI companies increasingly use lists of ethical statements to guide the behavior of their complex systems. However, there are no assessments of whether large language models behave in line with these “constitutions” or “model specifications.” Through the use of this grant, our research will address this gap in transparency and evaluation by building the first assessment of whether large language models behave as their creators intend. This work includes analyzing ethical use guidelines, generating data for evaluation, and building software to audit leading commercial AI systems. Creating novel tools for testing if large language models behave as they should can help engineers, lawmakers, and ethicists better steer AI to be safe and beneficial.
Speaking as citizens: The politics of discourse in multilingual Africa | Camille DeJarnett, Political Science
How does the lack of a shared national language affect how states relate to citizens, and citizens to one Another? My project examines this question in the linguistically diverse context of sub-Saharan Africa where, lacking majority native languages, most states use former colonial languages for official purposes. However, in most cases few citizens speak these languages fluently, potentially placing limits on their civic participation. Using both empirical and normative approaches, my work examines the relationship between a state’s language environment and its citizens’ engagement in civic life, assessing whether a state’s language policy choices might help or hinder active citizenship.
Graduate Community Building Grant Recipients 2024-25
The China Law and Policy Association (CLPA) hosted a book talk with Professor Shitong Qiao of Duke University Law School on his book, The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China (Cambridge University Press, 2025). The event engaged Stanford students and faculty in a conversation on the intersection of law and ethics of residential community participation in authoritarian regimes. Professor Qiao’s book draws on six years of fieldwork to explore how homeowner associations (HOAs) in China have created new spaces of participatory governance and ethical dilemmas in collective decision-making.
re:think—Humanists Beyond the PhD is a new and growing student organization on campus. Started in Autumn 2024, the organization gathers graduate students and professionals in a variety of fields to have productive and collaborative conversations about the value and meaning of humanities graduate education in a rapidly changing professional and social landscape. The grant supported two events, Do I Have To Sell My Soul? Re:Thinking Our Values, and Re:Thinking Your Network, both of which invited speakers and participants to share the ways in which their values directly impacted their professional career and work.
Past Grant Recipient: Making the Case for “Good” in a Platform Company: The Persuasive Work of Trust and Safety Professionals
Making the Case for “Good” in a Platform Company: The Persuasive Work of Trust and Safety Professionals Recipient: Tomás Guarna (Communication grad student), 2023-24 academic year. Tomás's research explores the organizational practices that Trust and Safety professionals in technology companies engage in to pursue their ethical goals. His research shows that the achievement of ethical goals by contemporary platforms is structurally conditioned by the incentives, designs, and limitations of platform companies. It justifies a need to ambitiously re-think how Internet platforms understand their ethical missions and the organizational structures they create for this. The grant supported travel to present his research at EASST-4S 2024 for Trust & Safety professionals.
Past Grant Recipient: Expanding Legal Aid Internationally Using AI
Expanding Legal Aid Internationally Using AI Recipient: Isabella Jordan (Computer Science grad student), 2023-24 academic year. International Bridges of Justice aims to help aid international injustice by providing better legal aid to those who cannot afford it. Through this organization, Isabella is working on a project to create a chatbot where incarcerated individuals can ask specific legal aid questions and get accurate and thorough responses in the event they cannot access a sufficient lawyer. Another project is creating an AI system in which, given a patient profile (ID number, case, etc), it could generate what they are eligible to access, such as bail opportunities.
Past Grant Recipient: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Digital Empowerment Curriculum in Promoting Ethical and Safe Use of Digital Media
Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Digital Empowerment Curriculum in Promoting Ethical and Safe Use of Digital Media Recipient: Mridul Joshi (Graduate School of Education grad student), 2023-24 academic year. Although social media platforms can generate significant consumer benefits, research shows that their use can also have negative effects on well-being and mental health and on social and political outcomes. To address these potential issues, many digital literacy programs on responsible digital media use have been developed and implemented in the past decade, but there has been no rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness. Through the use of this grant, Mridul and his colleagues address this gap by conducting a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of such a program on young adults in urban India.
Past Grant Recipient: Advancing Social Equity in California’s Energy Transition
Advancing Social Equity in California’s Energy Transition Recipient: Emilia Groupp (Anthropology grad student), 2023-24 academic year. The transition to cleaner forms of energy offers an unparalleled opportunity to address long-standing social inequities. At the very least, a just energy transition requires that marginalized communities benefit equitably in the process. Yet, we lack an understanding of how current transition policies in California impact households facing economic precarity. As a result, there is a risk that current policies may only benefit higher-wealth households. Emilia has developed a survey tool that solves this problem by rapidly assessing household wealth, a tool that public agencies can use in determining eligibility for programs. The grant provides funding to test the survey in San Mateo County.
Past Grant Recipient: AI Ethics and the Global South
AI Ethics and the Global South Recipient: Evani Radiya-Dixit (Sociology grad student), 2023-24 academic year. Many existing AI design, deployment, and research practices are not oriented toward the diversity of global cultures. Yet, considering cultural contexts and injustices is critical in these practices, especially as AI products are deployed globally. The proposed funds provided Evani the opportunity to share her research with international scholars and practitioners, interested in the ethics and societal impacts of technology. According to her research, the term “Global South” has become increasingly popular, but suffers from several limitations. Her work proposes an alternative model that builds upon South-South solidarity and offers structural changes that consider the plurality of cultures within and across countries.
Past Grant Recipient: Paradoxes of Achieving Diversity in Corporate Boards
Paradoxes of Achieving Diversity in Corporate Boards Recipient: Jack Lin (Graduate School of Business grad student), 2023-24 academic year. Jack's research examines how prior contact between majority group members and underrepresented groups on corporate boards can paradoxically lead to a reduced willingness to appoint women and minorities to other boards they serve on. His research suggests an ironic and troubling effect whereby past diversity progress can undermine future diversity efforts by creating an illusion of greater equality than truly exists. The findings highlight the need for corporate leaders to maintain focus on increasing diversity within their organizations even as diversity increases in the broader corporate environment. This grant supports his efforts to share these findings with scholars and business leaders worldwide.
Past Grant Recipient: Heritage Afterlives
Heritage Afterlives Recipient: Shubhangni Gupta (Anthropology grad student), 2023-24 academic year. Shubhangni studies the practices of heritage through ideas of ownership and expertise in the context of Shekhavati havelis in provincial and rural Rajasthan. Through robust ethnographic and archival fieldwork that this grant supports, she argues that studying non-institutionalized and non-monumentalized historical buildings in a non-urban landscape can be studied through the conceptual framework of ‘heritage afterlives,’ which encapsulates the multiple and conflictual ideas of use (and misuse), heritage value and engagement between local community stakeholders and external heritage experts. By understanding Shekhavati havelis and their heritage afterlives, we can uncover how different types of heritage expertise are made visible or invisible in the struggle to establish multifaceted ownership of a fast-changing material landscape.
Past Grant Recipient: Should We Ban Mobile Gaming?
Should We Ban Mobile Gaming? Recipient: Matt Brown (Economics grad student), 2023-24 academic year. Mobile gambling has exploded in popularity in the United States. While proponents say that legalization is beneficial since people derive entertainment value from mobile gambling, critics argue that increased access to mobile gambling has brought about an increase in harmful "problem gambling." The grant provides funding for Matt's research project, where he provides new evidence about mobile gambling and gambling problems. Using a novel paradigm that links survey data with participant betting histories, he measures the fraction of consumption that is driven by errors and explores the implications of the results for policy evaluation.