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.
Deadline: Sep. 25, 2024
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.
Applicants must:
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
2019
- Laura F. Edwards: Professor, History, Duke University - Only the Clothes on Her Back: Textiles, Law, and Commerce in the Nineteenth-Century United States
2016
- Rebecca Stein (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Duke University): Captured: How the Digital Camera Has Changed the Israeli Occupation
2015
- Laura Suzanne Lieber (Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Duke University) - Staging the Sacred: Orchestrating Holiness in Late Antiquity
- Jennie Grillo (Assistant Professor, Divinity School, Duke University) - The Afterlife of the Apocryphal Daniel: Martyrdom, Idolatry, Liturgy