ACLS invites research proposals from scholars in all disciplines of the humanities and interpretive social sciences. In the 2025-26 competition cycle, the program will award up to 60 fellowships to scholars across all stages of the scholarly career. Approximately half of this year's awards will support early-career scholars.
About American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships
Opportunity Details
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. ACLS is committed to inclusive excellence, which we define as the pursuit of academic excellence that is enriched by a plurality of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.
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 (without significant scholarly interpretation and apparatus), or projects that are primarily pedagogical in focus.
Benefits of American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships
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. ACLS provides award supplements of between $3,000-$6,000 for independent scholars, adjunct faculty, and faculty with teaching-intensive roles for costs incurred during the fellowship term, including research support, access to manuscript development workshops, learned society conference attendance, health insurance, or child- or eldercare.
American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships Requirements
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 quality).
- (for applicants who hold a tenure-track position tenured or untenured - at the time of application) have had a lapse of at least two years between the end of their last supported research leave of a semester or more and September 1, 2026.
- devote six to twelve months to full-time research and/or writing during the award period, to be initiated between July 1, 2026, and July 1, 2027, and to be completed by December 31, 2027.
Application Date and Process
Applications must be submitted online and must include the components:
- Completed application form.
- Proposal (no more than five pages, double spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font, inclusive of any footnotes or endnotes).
- Up to two additional pages of images, musical scores, or other similar supporting non-text materials (optional).
- Work plan (no more than one page, in double-spaced text or in a timeline/chart format, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font). The work plan should clearly outline the work to be undertaken over the course of the fellowship term and demonstrate how this work fits into the overall trajectory of the project. Ideally, the work plan will give peer reviewers a sense of which aspects of the proposed work the applicant will be doing when, and where.
- Bibliography (without annotation, no more than two pages, single spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font).
- Publications list (no more than two pages, single spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font).
- A brief personal statement of up to one page (double spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font) describing your intellectual trajectory as a scholar.
- A brief writing sample (no more than eight pages total, double spaced, including any footnotes or endnotes, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font), including a brief description of context and the sample’s relation to the proposed project. Please see FAQ for writing sample formatting guidelines.
- In the 2025-26 competition year, this program will not accept reference letters.
All uploads must have margins of one inch on all sides. Applicants may use any standard citation style in their proposal narrative or writing sample, although citations (footnotes or endnotes) are included in the page count for either document. While text in the body of the proposal and writing sample must be double spaced and in 11-point Arial or Helvetica font, footnotes may be in 10-point font and single spaced. Applications that do not adhere to stated formatting guidelines will be excluded from review. For more information, see FAQs.
Evaluation Criteria
Peer reviewers are asked to be mindful of ACLS’s commitment to inclusive excellence. For ACLS, inclusive excellence means that humanistic scholarship benefits from a wide range of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. ACLS believes academic excellence is best achieved when all individuals have the opportunity to contribute fully to the scholarly community. We are especially interested in supporting scholars who hail from diverse institutions and groups that are underrepresented in the academy. However, all applications are evaluated on their individual scholarly merit, the originality and significance of the proposed project, and the applicant’s record of achievement, without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, or any other protected characteristic. Reviewers in this program are asked to evaluate all eligible proposals on the following five criteria:
- The potential of the project to advance the field or fields of study in which it is proposed and make an original and significant contribution to knowledge.
- The quality and innovativeness of the proposal with regard to its methodology, scope, theoretical framework, and grounding in the relevant scholarly literature. ACLS welcomes applications that challenge scholarly orthodoxy.
- The feasibility of the project and the likelihood that the applicant will execute the work within the proposed time frame.
- The scholarly record and career trajectory of the applicant, taking into account relative advantages and constraints on resources for the proposed project and over the course of the applicant’s career.
- The potential of the award to advance ACLS’s commitment to inclusive excellence, understood as the enhancement of scholarship through the inclusion of a wide range of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences, and the recognition of academic excellence from all sectors of higher education and beyond.
Application Deadline
25 September, 2025
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American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships
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