Abstract Funding allocation in academia reflects broader disciplinary hierarchies and systemic inequalities, particularly within the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). This study investigates patterns of funding acknowledgments and funding concentration in the SSH at two universities (University of Copenhagen; University of Toronto) over a 20-year period (2002–22). Using Scopus-indexed journal article data, we analyse the proportion of acknowledged funded versus non-funded research, the distribution of funding sources, and the extent to which funding is concentrated towards specific authors and research topics. Our findings reveal significant disparities in funding allocation, with a small subset of authors benefitting from a disproportionate share of funding. We also observe a strong correlation between interdisciplinary research and funding success, suggesting that SSH scholars have enhanced their funding prospects by aligning their work with applied, policy-relevant, or STEM-adjacent domains.
Alesia Zuccala (Thu,) studied this question.