For 2024–2025 and 2025–2026, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies will focus on the topic of Truth and Information.
Fellowships are awarded to scholars who hold full time academic positions, and who are expected to return to those positions at the conclusion of their Fellowship. Verification of employment and salary will be requested prior to approval by the Dean of the Faculty. Ph.D. required.
The deadline for receipt of applications and letters of recommendation for fellowships is December 1, 2024.
Recent debates about truth, lies, and authenticity have reminded us that truth has a history, and that the meaning of truthfulness and justice keep changing over time. The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University seeks applications from scholars exploring the historical evolution of regimes and practices of establishing, telling, and writing truth. We understand the notion of truth broadly: as a philosophical and epistemological category, an ideal of social equity and political justice, and a principle governing historical writing, legal, and scientific investigation. We invite historians who study the role of ideology, religion, informational technology, and media in the historical evolution of truth. We are also interested in projects on the history of lying, deception, and misinformation. Intellectual historians, historians of art, gender, race, sexuality, information, governance, science, and technology from antiquity to the modern period whose work engages with these subjects are encouraged to apply. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the use and misuse of facts in political propaganda, problems of evidence and objectivity, authenticity and source criticism, fakes, forgery and conspiracy theories, and diplomatic, inter- and intra- national reconciliation.
In selecting each group of Fellows, the selection committee seeks to foster a vibrant and diverse intellectual community, anchored by the broad historical problem that serves each year as the Center’s theme. A fellowship is awarded on the strength of the candidate’s research project, the relationship of that project to the Center’s theme, the candidate’s previous scholarly work, and the candidate’s ability to contribute to the intellectual life and intellectual exchange of the Center. In making its awards, the selection committee values a variety of analytical approaches within each year’s cohort as well as the range of each cohort’s work across a wide variety of periods and places.
- Applicants must have their doctoral degrees in hand at the time of application.
- Typically the selected fellows hold positions at universities.
- Princeton faculty members are not eligible for Center fellowships.
- Applicants who are non-U.S. nationals or who are members of traditionally underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.