CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
ACLS Fellowships
Due By 28 September 2023 9 PM EDT
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, 2024 and July 1, 2025, and to be completed by December 31, 2025. 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.)
This year, the fellowship is open to untenured scholars, working on or off the tenure track, who have earned a PhD in the humanities or humanistic social sciences on or after September 29, 2015.
ACLS will begin accepting applications in July 2023. 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 28, 2023.
Notifications will be sent via email in late March 2024.
View a recording of our September 2022 online information session for applicants.
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. Given the disproportionate effect the pandemic’s social and economic disruptions have had on emerging, independent, and untenured scholars, ACLS will continue in the 2023-24 competition year to offer these fellowships solely to untenured scholars who have earned the PhD within eight years of the application deadline. ACLS welcomes applications from scholars without faculty appointments and scholars off the tenure track.
In 2023-24, the program will award up to 60 fellowships. ACLS invites 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, or pedagogical projects.
ACLS Fellowships are intended to help scholars devote six to twelve months to full-time research and writing. (See FAQ) 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 sabbatical pay. For fellows with tenure-track academic appointments, the total amount of support, including the ACLS Fellowship, may not exceed the candidate’s 2024 academic year salary. Fellows without tenure-track academic contracts may teach up to one course per semester (if desired), or perform the equivalent of one course per semester in administrative work, during the fellowship term. (See FAQ) Tenure of the fellowship may begin no earlier than July 1, 2024 and no later than July 1, 2025. The fellowship term must conclude no later than December 31, 2025.
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. Independent scholars and adjunct faculty will receive an award supplement of $7,500 for costs incurred during the research term, including research support, access to manuscript development workshops, learned society conference attendance, health insurance, or child- or eldercare.
For more details on eligibility, application guidelines, evaluation criteria, additional opportunities, supporting documents, and webinars, please see https://www.acls.org/competitions/acls-fellowships/.