ACLS Fellowship Program

The longest running program in the Council’s portfolio, the ACLS Fellowship program supports outstanding scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. In the most recent competition year, ACLS awarded approximately $3.6 million in support to 60 exceptional scholars.  

In 2020 ACLS temporarily restricted eligibility for the awards to untenured scholars who earned the PhD within eight years of the application deadline. This policy applied to the 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24 competition years. More information here. Starting in the 2024-25 competition year, the program once again will support scholars working at all postdoctoral career stages.

The ACLS Fellowship program is funded primarily by ACLS’s endowment, which has benefited from the generous support of esteemed institutions and individuals including the Mellon Foundation, Arcadia Charitable Trust, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ACLS Research University Consortium and college and university Associates, past fellows, and friends of ACLS. 

Fellowships include the following additional opportunities (no separate application required): 

• ACLS Project Development Grants support projects from scholars holding teaching-intensive positions. Eligible applicants who advance to the finalist round of the ACLS Fellowship program but are not selected for fellowships may be awarded a grant of $5,000 to help advance their projects. (See FAQ for more information.) 
• ACLS Carl and Betty Pforzheimer Fellowships in English and American Literature 
• ACLS Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. Fellowships in Chinese History 
• ACLS H. and T. King Fellowships in Ancient American Art and Culture 
• ACLS Marwan M. and Ute Kraidy Fellowships in the Arab World and Latin America
• ACLS Morton N. Cohen and Richard N. Swift Fellowships
• ACLS Oscar Handlin Fellowships in American History 
• ACLS Pauline Yu Fellowships in Chinese or Comparative Literature 
• ACLS Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellowships in Music Studies 

In addition, applicants for the ACLS Fellowship are eligible to apply for the ACLS/New York Public Library Fellowships. This joint fellowship requires a separate application to the Cullman Center, due in late September.