ACLS Fellowship Program 2025–2026: Up to $60,000 for Scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Fellowship Details

• Maximum award: $60,000
• Tenure: six to twelve months devoted to full-time analysis and/or writing, to be initiated between July 1, 2026 and July 1, 2027, and to be accomplished by December 31, 2027. Six months of the fellowship tenure should be consecutive, however any the rest of the fellow’s award time period may be taken individually at a later date inside the eligible award window. (See FAQ for extra data.)
• The fellowship is open to students in any respect postdoctoral profession levels, engaged on or off the tenure observe, who’ve earned a PhD in the humanities or interpretive social sciences by the application deadline. For established students with no PhD, please see the FAQ for additional details about eligibility for this program.
• ACLS will start accepting purposes in July 2025. Completed purposes should be submitted by way of the ACLS on-line fellowship and grant administration system (ofa.acls.org) no later than 9:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, September 25, 2025.
• Notifications will probably be despatched through e-mail in late March 2026.
• For data on how to request reviewer suggestions, see FAQ.

Program Overview

ACLS invites analysis proposals from students in all disciplines of the humanities and interpretive social sciences. In the 2025-26 competitors cycle, the program will award up to 60 fellowships to students throughout all levels of the scholarly profession. Approximately half of this 12 months’s awards will help early-career students.

ACLS invites purposes from students pursuing analysis on subjects grounded in any time interval, world area, or humanistic methodology. ACLS goals to choose fellows who’re broadly consultant of the number of humanistic scholarship throughout all fields of study. ACLS is dedicated to inclusive excellence, which we outline as the pursuit of educational excellence that’s enriched by a plurality of backgrounds, experiences, and views. We welcome and encourage purposes from all eligible students, no matter race, ethnicity, nationwide origin, incapacity, age, or any side of id. We additionally encourage purposes from students throughout the vary of educational establishments and past. In ACLS’s peer assessment, funding packages, and engagement with fellows, we aspire to enact our values of fairness and inclusion as integral parts of scholarly excellence.

The final objective of the mission must be a serious piece of scholarly work by the applicant, which may take the type of a monograph, articles, publicly engaged humanities mission, digital analysis mission, important version, or different scholarly assets. The fellowships help tasks at any stage of improvement – starting, center, or finish. This program doesn’t fund works of fiction (e.g., novels or movies), textbooks, simple translation (with out important scholarly interpretation and equipment), or tasks which might be primarily pedagogical in focus.

The fellowship stipend is ready at $60,000 for a 12-month fellowship. Awards of shorter period will probably be prorated at $5,000 per 30 days, with the minimal award set at $30,000. ACLS offers award dietary supplements of between $3,000-$6,000 for unbiased students, adjunct school, and school with teaching-intensive roles for prices incurred throughout the fellowship time period, together with analysis help, entry to manuscript improvement workshops, discovered society convention attendance, medical insurance, or child- or eldercare.

Tenure of the fellowship could start no sooner than July 1, 2026, and no later than July 1, 2027. The fellowship time period should conclude no later than December 31, 2027. ACLS Fellowships are supposed to assist students dedicate six to twelve months to full-time analysis and writing. The awards are moveable and are tenable at any applicable web site for analysis. An ACLS Fellowship could also be held concurrently with different fellowships and grants and institutional help (akin to sabbatical pay) inside limits pre-set by ACLS every competitors 12 months. See the FAQ for additional details about the expectations of the award time period and our guidelines for limits on concurrent sources of help.

Eligibility

Applicants should:

1. be US residents, everlasting residents, Indigenous people residing in the United States by way of rights related to the Jay Treaty of 1794, DACA recipients, asylees, refugees, or people granted Temporary Protected Status in the United States. In addition, international nationals who’ve been dwelling in the United States or US territories for three or extra years earlier than the application deadline are additionally eligible, offered that they don’t set up everlasting residence exterior the United States throughout the interval 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 display the equal of a PhD in publications and skilled expertise might also qualify. See FAQ for extra data).
3. (for candidates who maintain a tenure-track place – tenured or untenured – at the time of application) have had a lapse of not less than two years between the finish of their final supported analysis depart of a semester or extra and September 1, 2026. Please see FAQ about the definition of supported analysis leaves and how the timing of such leaves impacts eligibility.
4. dedicate six to twelve months to full-time analysis and/or writing throughout the award interval, to be initiated between July 1, 2026, and July 1, 2027, and to be accomplished by December 31, 2027. Please see FAQ for extra data, together with extra choices for students holding contingent school positions.

Application Guidelines

Applications should be submitted on-line and should embody the parts:

• Completed application type.
• Proposal (not more than 5 pages, double spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font, inclusive of any footnotes or endnotes).
• Up to two extra pages of photos, musical scores, or different related supporting non-text supplies (elective).
• Work plan (no a couple of web page, in double-spaced textual content or in a timeline/chart format, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font). The work plan ought to clearly define the work to be undertaken over the course of the fellowship time period and display how this work matches into the general trajectory of the mission. Ideally, the work plan will give peer reviewers a way of which features of the proposed work the applicant will probably be doing when, and the place.
• Bibliography (with out annotation, not more than two pages, single spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font).
• Publications record (not more than two pages, single spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font).
• A short private assertion of up to one web page (double spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font) describing your mental trajectory as a scholar.
• A short writing pattern (not more than eight pages whole, double spaced, together with any footnotes or endnotes, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font), together with a short description of context and the pattern’s relation to the proposed mission. Please see FAQ for writing pattern formatting tips.
• In the 2025-26 competitors 12 months, this program won’t settle for reference letters.

All uploads should have margins of 1 inch on all sides. Applicants could use any normal quotation type in their proposal narrative or writing pattern, though citations (footnotes or endnotes) are included in the web page depend for both doc. While textual content in the physique of the proposal and writing pattern should be double spaced and in 11-point Arial or Helvetica font, footnotes could also be in 10-point font and single spaced. Applications that don’t adhere to said formatting tips will probably be excluded from assessment.

Please notice: ACLS requires all candidates to have an ORCID iD. Learn more.

Evaluation Criteria

Peer reviewers are requested to be aware of ACLS’s dedication to inclusive excellence. For ACLS, inclusive excellence signifies that humanistic scholarship advantages from a variety of views, backgrounds, and experiences. ACLS believes tutorial excellence is greatest achieved when all people have the alternative to contribute totally to the scholarly neighborhood. We are particularly in supporting students who hail from numerous establishments and teams which might be underrepresented in the academy. However, all purposes are evaluated on their particular person scholarly benefit, the originality and significance of the proposed mission, and the applicant’s file of accomplishment, with out regard to race, ethnicity, gender, or some other protected attribute. Reviewers in this program are requested to consider all eligible proposals on the following 5 standards:

1. The potential of the mission to advance the subject or fields of study in which it’s proposed and make an unique and important contribution to data.
2. The high quality and innovativeness of the proposal with regard to its methodology, scope, theoretical framework, and grounding in the related scholarly literature. ACLS welcomes purposes that problem scholarly orthodoxy.
3. The feasibility of the mission and the chance that the applicant will execute the work inside the proposed time-frame.
4. The scholarly file and profession trajectory of the applicant, making an allowance for relative benefits and constraints on assets for the proposed mission and over the course of the applicant’s profession.
5. The potential of the award to advance ACLS’s commitment to inclusive excellence, understood as the enhancement of scholarship by way of the inclusion of a variety of views, backgrounds, and experiences, and the recognition of educational excellence from all sectors of upper training and past.

Additional Opportunities for ACLS Fellowship Applicants

Applicants for the ACLS Fellowship are additionally eligible for the following alternatives, which require no separate application:

• ACLS Project Development Grants help tasks from school at teaching-intensive establishments akin to HBCUs, regional comprehensives, and neighborhood schools. Applicants from these establishments who usually are not chosen for fellowships, however current notably promising proposals, could also be awarded a grant of $5,000 to assist advance their tasks. (See FAQ for extra data.) Project Development Grants don’t require a separate application. All eligible candidates from teaching-intensive establishments are thought of for these grants.
• Named awards made potential by beneficiant donors. The following named fellowships will probably be awarded to chosen candidates from inside the ACLS Fellowship program, and don’t require a separate application:
  • ACLS Carl and Betty Pforzheimer Fellowships in English and American Literature, for students pursuing analysis on Anglophone literature from any interval. Established by ACLS Board Member Carl H. Pforzheimer III and his spouse in recognition of our centennial anniversary with the hope of fostering new data in these fields.
  • ACLS Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. Fellowships in Chinese History, for students pursuing analysis on Chinese historical past, in explicit trendy Chinese historical past after 1912. Established in reminiscence of Professor Wakeman, the late scholar of East Asian historical past and Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
  • The ACLS H. and T. King Fellowships in Ancient American Art and Culture, for students, in explicit these in the early levels of their careers, who’re pursuing analysis on the ​artwork​ and structure of pre-contact societies in the Americas, in addition to anthropology, archaeology, epigraphy, ​and historic accounts associated to their visible tradition.
  • ACLS/Marwan M. and Ute Kraidy Centennial Fellowship in the Study of the Arab World and Latin America, for students pursuing analysis in any subject of the humanities and interpretive social sciences on the Arab and or Latin American worlds, with a particular curiosity in supporting comparative or transnational approaches throughout 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 students pursuing analysis 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 worldwide regulation.
  • ACLS Oscar Handlin Fellowships in American History, for students pursuing archival analysis on American historical past. Established in reminiscence of Professor Handlin, a professor of historical past at Harvard University for over 50 years, who was recognized for his promotion of social, ethnic, and immigration historical past.
  • ACLS Pauline Yu Fellowships in Chinese or Comparative Literature, for students pursuing analysis in Chinese and/or comparative literature. Established in honor of Pauline Yu, president emeritus of ACLS and a distinguished scholar of Chinese Literature, by her household, mates and colleagues.
  • ACLS Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellowships in Music Studies, for students pursuing analysis in any space of musicology. Established by Professors McClary and Walser to profit rising or established researchers in music research with a objective of supporting the most promising and progressive scholarship of the future.
• Through a partnership with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), a global membership group of interdisciplinary analysis facilities with over 170 members and associates in 23 nations, ACLS fellows have the alternative to spend all or part of their fellowship phrases in residence at chosen CHCI member organizations. This is an elective enhancement to the award for ACLS fellows and doesn’t require a separate application.

ACLS/New York Public Library Fellowships

ACLS could award residential fellowships in conjunction with The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. This alternative does require a separate application, due by 5 PM Eastern Daylight Time, September 26, 2025.

The Center offers alternatives for up to 15 fellows to discover the wealthy, numerous collections in the NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The Center additionally serves as a discussion board for the change of concepts amongst fellows, invited visitors, the wider tutorial and cultural communities, and the public. It offers particular person workplace house and widespread areas in the Library constructing. Fellows are required to be in residence from the starting of September 2026 by way of the finish of May 2027 and to take part in Center actions. These could embody lunches, panel discussions, public conversations, symposia, and interviews. More details about The New York Public Library and its collections is out there on the website.

The stipend for ACLS/NYPL fellowships will probably be $90,000. ACLS/NYPL fellowships are subfellowships inside the ACLS Fellowship program; they’ve the similar eligibility necessities, application type, and schedule. The solely extra proviso is that these residential fellowships will probably be granted to students whose tasks will profit from analysis in the NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

Please Note: Because it is a joint fellowship, candidates for ACLS/NYPL residential fellowships should additionally apply to the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the NYPL. The application for the NYPL competitors is out there here. The deadline for that separate application and three letters of advice is 5 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Friday, September 26, 2025.

An application for an ACLS/NYPL residential fellowship could have any one among 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 collectively by the two organizations.

The ACLS Fellowship program is funded primarily by the ACLS endowment, which has benefited from the beneficiant help of esteemed funders, members, and particular person donors since our founding in 1919.

Application Resources

Webinars and Office Hours

• Register for applicant office hours the place you possibly can ask questions to ACLS program employees.
• Watch a recorded webinar detailing competitors tips and greatest practices.

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