The ISSTD Research and Education Grant is a new funding initiative providing up to $10,000 USD to support innovative research aligned with the ISSTD mission.
To qualify, research must focus on complex trauma and dissociation, with trauma-related pathological dissociation as the central theme. Studies that address only complex trauma without this focus will not be considered. The grant supports a wide range of research methodologies, including neurobiological and physiological studies, survey-based research, clinical trials, qualitative and quantitative analyses, and secondary data analysis.
This grant is not designed to fully fund large-scale human subjects research but can serve as supplemental funding for ongoing projects or pilot studies to generate preliminary data for larger grant applications.
The grant committee is co-chaired by Drs. Lauren Lebois and Milissa Kaufman. The committee developed guidelines to align this funding opportunity with major research foundations and U.S. government grant standards. In May 2026, the committee issued its second formal call for proposals and received five applications. After initial screening, all five advanced to full review by the ISSTD Scientific Committee.
The highest-scoring applicant was Michael Anderson, PhD, Program Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. His research will examine “Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Amnesia in Dissociative Identity Disorder and Dissociative Amnesia.”