Research Fellowships for UT Faculty and Graduate Students (Harry Ransom Center)

Deadline: December 1, 2020


Awards for Fall 2021 and Spring 2022

The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, invites applications from the UT-Austin community for its 2021–2022 research fellowships.

In this next award cycle, the Ransom Center will grant 12 fellowships—approximately 6 to UT faculty and 6 to UT graduate students—for projects that require substantial on-site use of its collections and critically or creatively engage the collections. The Ransom Center’s internationally renowned collections support research in all areas of the humanities including literature, photography, film, art, performing arts, music, cultural history, and humanity more broadly.

This fellowship opportunity encourages local academic engagement with the collections to grow our research initiatives. Many UT faculty and students engage with the Center’s collections through teaching, research, assistantships and internships. We hope this pilot fellowship encourages more extensive use of the collections by the UT community for the benefit of future research projects, especially during a time when national support for research and travel is limited. Research projects might include: scholarly articles or monographs, dissertations, creative work, digital humanities, performance-based research, exhibition proposals, research-based syllabi to grow student research, or other research projects around the collections. We are open to both traditional and innovative research proposals to animate the collections. The Ransom Center is especially interested in proposals from candidates who can contribute to diversity and excellence as we strive to grow a vital, inclusive research culture.

The deadline for applications is December 1, 2020, at NOON CST. Applications must be submitted through the Ransom Center’s website.

Applications will be accepted from across the university, and fellowships can be used during the semester of Fall 2021 or Spring 2022. Fellowship stipends for both faculty and graduate students will be $3,000. All fellows must be local and must be scheduled to be in residence in Austin for the academic year. No travel reimbursements will be available. Fellows will be required to participate in a few group forums about their research that will be scheduled to accommodate their teaching and other commitments. While research schedules will be flexible, physically-distanced protocols following the Covid-19 pandemic may affect schedules, so flexibility is required.

Eligibility: Faculty from all ranks at UT are encouraged to apply. For graduate students, preference may be given to doctoral students, but MFA, MSIS, and other terminal master’s degree students are also encouraged to apply. Applicants are encouraged to contact the Ransom Center’s staff about collections at: reference@hrc.utexas.edu

Applicants will be notified by March 31.

This opportunity hopes to integrate more UT faculty and graduate students into the Ransom Center’s long-standing research culture and community. During this pilot year of the UT Fellows program, external fellows from the 2019–2021 award cycles (who needed to postpone their fellowships due to Covid-19) will immerse in the Center’s collections and will likewise adhere to physically-distanced protocols. Since the fellowship program’s inauguration in 1990, the Harry Ransom Center has supported more than 1,270 research projects through fellowship awards.

Ransom Center fellowships are funded by a number of endowments and sponsors.

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