The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to invite applications for Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships, which provide a year of support for doctoral students preparing to embark on innovative dissertation research projects. 

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships support graduate students who show promise of leading their fields in important new directions. The fellowships are designed to intervene at the formative stage of dissertation development, before research and writing are advanced. The program seeks to expand the range of research methodologies, formats, and areas of inquiry traditionally considered suitable for the dissertation, with a particular focus on supporting scholars who can build a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable academy.

Application deadline: October 30, 2024, 9:00 PM EDT

ACLS will award up to 45 fellowships in this competition for a one-year term beginning between July and September 2025 for nine to twelve months, covering the 2025-26 academic year. The fellowship may be carried out in residence at the fellow’s home institution or at any other appropriate site for the research. These fellowships may not be held concurrently with any other fellowship or grant.

The total award includes a $42,000 base stipend for the fellowship year, as well as up to $3,000 for research and travel, and up to $5,000 in professional development funds to support skills acquisition or additional research to support innovative/expansive directions. An additional $2,000 is available as a stipend for the external mentor.

Learn more and apply at https://www.acls.org/competitions/mellon-acls-dissertation-innovation-fellowship/. Potential applicants can read about the past awardees’ projects.

ACLS believes that humanistic scholarship can only thrive when it welcomes and affirmatively includes voices, narratives, and subjects that have historically been underrepresented or under-studied in the academy. Applications that foreground the cultivation of new sources of knowledge, innovation in scholarly discourse, and, above all, responsiveness to the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities, including (but not limited to) Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous communities from around the world; people with disabilities; queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people; and people of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, are especially welcome. ACLS encourages applications from all eligible fields of humanistic inquiry and aims to support innovative research grounded in any historical time period (ancient to contemporary), community, or region of the world. We also believe that institutional diversity enhances the scholarly enterprise, and we encourage applications from doctoral students in eligible departments from all accredited institutions of higher education in the United States.

Last year, ACLS awarded over $25 million to approximately 400 scholars working in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Discover all ACLS fellowship and grant programs.