ACLS Announces 2024 Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies Fellows and Grantees

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce the 2024 Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellows and Travel Grantees in China Studies.  

The awards are part of the redesigned Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies, which the Henry Luce Foundation has awarded ACLS $1.25 million to continue through 2025. This generous grant will support the next round of Early Career Fellowships, Travel Grants, and a Collaborative Grant, as well as a mapping project to identify archives and collections related to China studies around the world. Additional long-term fellowships are made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. 

In 2024, the program will support 25 fellows and grantees representing a diverse range of institutions and disciplines, including anthropology, film and media studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, and sociology.  

• Fourteen Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships in China Studies support emerging scholars whose research focuses on China’s societies, histories, cultures, geopolitics, art, and global impact. This year’s awards include eight long-term fellowships of up to $45,000, which allow recent PhDs to take leave from university responsibilities for research and writing toward a scholarly text, and six flexible fellowships of $15,000, which enable scholars with heavy teaching and service responsibilities to advance their projects.
• Eleven Luce/ACLS Travel Grants in China Studies provide $5,000 for graduate students in a PhD program to visit research sites in China or China studies-related collections or archives anywhere in the world. The 2024 grantees will visit China, Kazakhstan, Taiwan, and more to research topics, ranging from the nineteenth-century Chilean copper trade and family care in rural Tibet, to displacement and migration at the Kazakh-Chinese border, and the political economies of carbon capture technologies.

“ACLS and the Henry Luce Foundation have partnered to advance the understanding of China for 40 years,” said Deena Ragavan, ACLS Director of International Programs. “We are excited to continue our re-envisioned Program in China Studies, which prioritizes supporting a wide diversity of scholars, institutions, and research topics and improving public understanding of Chinese cultures, histories, and societies. ACLS is proud to support these outstanding 2024 Early Career Fellows and Travel Grantees, whose research will help provide a critical, nuanced understanding of China’s past and present.” 

Applications are currently open for the 2024 Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies, which will award up to $150,000 for innovative pilot activities that initiate long-term transformative change in the field of China studies. Final proposals are due June 13, 2024, and the winner will be announced later this year.