Competition

ACLS Fellowships

Supporting outstanding scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences

 

Fellowship Details

  • Maximum award: $60,000
  • Tenure: six to twelve months devoted to full-time research and/or writing, to be initiated between July 1, 2025 and July 1, 2026, and to be completed by December 31, 2026. Six months of the fellowship tenure must be consecutive, but any remainder of the fellow’s award term can be taken separately at a later date within the eligible award window. (See FAQ for more information.)
  • The fellowship is open to scholars at all postdoctoral career stages, working on or off the tenure track, who have earned a PhD in the humanities or interpretive social sciences by the application deadline. For established scholars without a PhD, please see the FAQ for further information about eligibility for this program.
  • Completed applications must be submitted through the ACLS online fellowship and grant administration system (ofa.acls.org) no later than 9:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, September 25, 2024.
  • Notifications will be sent via email in late March 2025.
  • For information on how to request reviewer feedback, see FAQ.

Summary

ACLS invites research proposals from scholars in all disciplines of the humanities and interpretive social sciences. In the 2024-25 competition cycle, the program will award up to 60 fellowships to scholars across all stages of the scholarly career. Approximately half of this year’s awards will support early-career scholars.

ACLS welcomes applications from scholars pursuing research on topics grounded in any time period, world region, or humanistic methodology. ACLS aims to select fellows who are broadly representative of the variety of humanistic scholarship across all fields of study. We also believe that diversity enhances scholarship and seek to recognize academic excellence from all sectors of higher education and beyond. In ACLS’s peer review, funding packages, and engagement with fellows, we aspire to enact our values of equity and inclusion.

The ultimate goal of the project should be a major piece of scholarly work by the applicant, which can take the form of a monograph, articles, publicly engaged humanities project, digital research project, critical edition, or other scholarly resources. The fellowships support projects at any stage of development – beginning, middle, or end. This program does not fund works of fiction (e.g., novels or films), textbooks, straightforward translation (without significant scholarly interpretation and apparatus), or projects that are primarily pedagogical in focus.

The fellowship stipend is set at $60,000 for a 12-month fellowship. Awards of shorter duration will be prorated at $5,000 per month, with the minimum award set at $30,000. ACLS provides award supplements of between $3,000-$6,000 for independent scholars, adjunct faculty, and faculty with teaching-intensive roles for costs incurred during the fellowship term, including research support, access to manuscript development workshops, learned society conference attendance, health insurance, or child- or eldercare.

Tenure of the fellowship may begin no earlier than July 1, 2025, and no later than July 1, 2026. The fellowship term must conclude no later than December 31, 2026. ACLS Fellowships are intended to help scholars devote six to twelve months to full-time research and writing. The awards are portable and are tenable at any appropriate site for research. An ACLS Fellowship may be held concurrently with other fellowships and grants and institutional support (such as sabbatical pay) within limits pre-set by ACLS each competition year. See the FAQ for further information about the expectations of the award term and our rules for limits on concurrent sources of support.

Eligibility

Applicants must:

  1. be US citizens, permanent residents, Indigenous individuals residing in the United States through rights associated with the Jay Treaty of 1794, DACA recipients, asylees, refugees, or individuals granted Temporary Protected Status in the United States. In addition, foreign nationals who have been living in the United States or US territories for three or more years before the application deadline are also eligible, provided that they do not establish permanent residence outside the United States during the period of the fellowship.
  2. have earned a PhD in the humanities or interpretive social sciences no later than the application deadline. (An established scholar who can demonstrate the equivalent of a PhD in publications and professional experience may also qualify. See FAQ for more information).
  3. devote six to twelve months to full-time research and/or writing during the award period, to be initiated between July 1, 2025, and July 1, 2026, and to be completed by December 31, 2026. Please see FAQ for more information, including additional options for scholars holding contingent faculty positions.

Application Guidelines

Applications must be submitted online and must include the components listed below. All uploads must have margins of one inch on all sides and use Arial or Helvetica 11-point font. Applicants may use any standard citation style in their proposal narrative or writing sample, although citations (footnotes or endnotes) are included in the page count for either document. Applications that do not adhere to stated formatting guidelines will be excluded from review.

  • Completed application form.
  • Proposal (no more than five pages, double spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font, inclusive of any footnotes or endnotes).
  • Up to two additional pages of images, musical scores, or other similar supporting non-text materials (optional).
  • Work plan (no more than one page, in double-spaced text or in a timeline/chart format, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font). The work plan should clearly outline the work to be undertaken over the course of the fellowship term and demonstrate how this work fits into the overall trajectory of the project. Ideally, the work plan will give peer reviewers a sense of which aspects of the proposed work the applicant will be doing when, and where.
  • Bibliography (without annotation, no more than two pages, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font).
  • Publications list (no more than two pages, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font).
  • A brief personal statement of up to one page (double spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font) describing your intellectual trajectory as a scholar.
  • A brief writing sample (no more than five pages total, single spaced, including any footnotes or endnotes, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font), including a brief description of context and the sample’s relation to the proposed project.
  • In the 2024-25 competition year, this program will not accept reference letters.

Please note: ACLS requires all applicants to have an ORCID iD. Learn more.

Evaluation Criteria

Peer reviewers are asked to be mindful of ACLS’s commitment to inclusive excellence, and of how equity and diversity are integral components of merit. We are especially interested in supporting scholars who hail from diverse institutions and groups that are underrepresented in the academy. Reviewers in this program are asked to evaluate all eligible proposals on the following five criteria:

  1. The potential of the project to advance the field or fields of study in which it is proposed and make an original and significant contribution to knowledge.
  2. The quality and innovativeness of the proposal with regard to its methodology, scope, theoretical framework, and grounding in the relevant scholarly literature. ACLS welcomes applications that challenge scholarly orthodoxy.
  3. The feasibility of the project and the likelihood that the applicant will execute the work within the proposed time frame.
  4. The scholarly record and career trajectory of the applicant, taking into account relative advantages and constraints on resources for the proposed project and over the course of the applicant’s career.
  5. The potential of the award to advance ACLS’s commitment to inclusive excellence, which is based on the principle that humanistic scholarship benefits from institutional diversity and the inclusion of voices that have been historically underrepresented in the academy due to race, gender, class and other aspects of identity.

Additional Opportunities for ACLS Fellowship Applicants

Applicants for the ACLS Fellowship are also eligible for the following opportunities, which require no separate application:

  • ACLS Project Development Grants support projects from faculty at teaching-intensive institutions such as HBCUs, regional comprehensives, and community colleges. Applicants from these institutions who are not selected for fellowships, but present particularly promising proposals, may be awarded a grant of $5,000 to help advance their projects. (See FAQ for more information.) Project Development Grants do not require a separate application.
  • Named awards made possible by generous donors. The following named fellowships will be awarded to selected applicants from within the ACLS Fellowship program, and do not require a separate application:
    • ACLS Carl and Betty Pforzheimer Fellowships in English and American Literature, for scholars pursuing research on Anglophone literature from any period. Established by ACLS Board Member Carl H. Pforzheimer III and his wife in recognition of our centennial anniversary with the hope of fostering new knowledge in these fields.
    • ACLS Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. Fellowships in Chinese History, for scholars pursuing research on Chinese history, in particular modern Chinese history after 1912. Established in memory of Professor Wakeman, the late scholar of East Asian history and Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
    • The ACLS H. and T. King Fellowships in Ancient American Art and Culture, for scholars, in particular those in the early stages of their careers, who are pursuing research on the ​art​ and architecture of pre-contact societies in the Americas, as well as anthropology, archaeology, epigraphy, ​and historical accounts related to their visual culture.
    • ACLS/Marwan M. and Ute Kraidy Centennial Fellowship in the Study of the Arab World and Latin America, for scholars pursuing research in any field of the humanities and interpretive social sciences on the Arab and or Latin American worlds, with a special interest in supporting comparative or transnational approaches across these spheres. Established by ACLS Board Member Marwan M. Kraidy and Ute Kraidy in recognition of our centennial anniversary.
    • ACLS Morton N. Cohen and Richard N. Swift Fellowship, for scholars pursuing research in the humanities. Established by bequests from Morton Norton Cohen, a scholar of Lewis Carroll and grantee of ACLS, and Richard Swift, a scholar of international law.
    • ACLS Oscar Handlin Fellowships in American History, for scholars pursuing archival research on American history. Established in memory of Professor Handlin, a professor of history at Harvard University for over 50 years, who was known for his promotion of social, ethnic, and immigration history.
    • ACLS Pauline Yu Fellowships in Chinese or Comparative Literature, for scholars pursuing research in Chinese and/or comparative literature. Established in honor of Pauline Yu, president emeritus of ACLS and a prominent scholar of Chinese Literature, by her family, friends and colleagues.
    • ACLS Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellowships in Music Studies, for scholars pursuing research in any area of musicology. Established by Professors McClary and Walser to benefit emerging or established researchers in music studies with a goal of supporting the most promising and innovative scholarship of the future.
  • Through a partnership with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), an international membership organization of interdisciplinary research centers with over 170 members and affiliates in 23 countries, ACLS fellows have the opportunity to spend all or part of their fellowship terms in residence at selected CHCI member organizations. This is an optional enhancement to the award for ACLS fellows and does not require a separate application.

ACLS/New York Public Library Fellowships

ACLS may award residential fellowships in conjunction with The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. This opportunity does require a separate application, due by 5 pm Eastern Daylight Time, Friday, September 27, 2024.

The Center provides opportunities for up to 15 fellows to explore the rich, diverse collections in the NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The Center also serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas among fellows, invited guests, the wider academic and cultural communities, and the interested public. It provides individual office space and common areas in the Library building. Fellows are required to be in residence from the beginning of September 2025 through the end of May 2026 and to participate in Center activities. These may include lunches, panel discussions, public conversations, symposia, and interviews. More information about The New York Public Library and its collections is available on the website.

The stipend for ACLS/NYPL fellowships will be $85,000. ACLS/NYPL fellowships are subfellowships within the ACLS Fellowship program; they have the same eligibility requirements, application form, and schedule. The only additional proviso is that these residential fellowships will be granted to scholars whose projects will benefit from research in the NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

Please Note: Because this is a joint fellowship, applicants for ACLS/NYPL residential fellowships must also apply to the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the NYPL. The application for the NYPL competition is available here. The deadline for application and three letters of recommendation is 5 pm Eastern Daylight Time, Friday, September 27, 2024.

An application for an ACLS/NYPL residential fellowship may have any one of the following outcomes:

  • a fellowship awarded solely by the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the NYPL,
  • an ACLS Fellowship awarded solely by ACLS, or
  • an ACLS/NYPL residential fellowship awarded jointly by the two organizations.

Institutions and individuals contribute to the ACLS Fellowship program and its endowment, including the Mellon Foundation, Arcadia Charitable Trust, the Council’s Research University Consortium and college and university Associates, former fellows, and individual friends of ACLS.

Supporting Documents and Resources

Webinars and Office Hours

View our 2024 competition webinar for tips and strategies about the 2024 application for ACLS Fellowships!