Support The Recently Defunded Norman Sicily Project

On April 2, 2025, the federal government terminated a $349,971 grant The Norman Sicily Project received from the National Endowment for the Humanities in April 2024. It was received after a rigorous competition (18% funding rate) and was the second prestigious award the project has received (the NEH also awarded it $50,000 to create the prototype that is currently available online in 2019). The project, when taken from prototype to full implementation, will include resources for three audiences: (1) students and the general public, (2) educators, and (3) researchers and is of interest for two main reasons. The first is that it makes available the finest hour in Sicily's long history, a story that very few are aware of. The second is that the fully implemented project will provide a model for a web app that can be used to capture and share with audiences of all levels the history and culture of places across time and space.

The future of this project, which, until Thursday, was scheduled to be completed in 2027, is now in question. This drive is meant to keep the main parts of it going as we look for other support. It would replace full and partial salaries of most of the core team members so that they can continue their work: the UX/UI team doing the redesign of the prototype, the two computer programmers who are doing the frontend and backend work, a mathematician who is performing network analysis on human relationships in the society, and a translator who is behind the Italian language version of the site. If we exceed the amount by $6,000, we can also meet our obligation to our talented Advisory Board who will provide feedback and check for accessibility.

If the federal funding is restored, the funds raised through GoFundMe will be directed to the next phase of the project: developing and training an AI model that will create a chatbot for the society. The redesigned web app already contains an acknowledgment page and any donor who would like to have their name added as supporters of the project will be recognized.

Finally, for now, we have set aside the sustainability leg of the previously-funded work as the cost of putting 4 people in the field to assess the integrity of surviving monuments from the society is very expensive. However, if anyone is an a position to make such a sizable donation to sponsor travel, please contact me directly.

If you would like to read more about the project's Principal Investigator, you can learn more about her here . As for documentation of the award by the National Endowment for the Humanities, that can be read here .

On behalf of the NSP team, thank you!