Deadline: September 25, 2025
Fellowship Details
- Maximum award: $60,000
- Tenure: six to twelve months devoted to full-time research and/or writing, to be initiated between July 1, 2026 and July 1, 2027, and to be completed by December 31, 2027. Six months of the fellowship tenure must be consecutive, but any remainder of the fellow’s award term can be taken separately at a later date within the eligible award window. (See FAQ for more information.)
- The fellowship is open to scholars at all postdoctoral career stages, working on or off the tenure track, who have earned a PhD in the humanities or interpretive social sciences by the application deadline. For established scholars without a PhD, please see the FAQ for further information about eligibility for this program.
- ACLS will begin accepting applications in July 2025. Completed applications must be submitted through the ACLS online fellowship and grant administration system (ofa.acls.org) no later than 9:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, September 25, 2025.
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.
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. We welcome and encourage applications from all eligible scholars, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, age, or any aspect of identity. We also encourage applications from scholars across the range of academic institutions and beyond. In ACLS’s peer review, funding packages, and engagement with fellows, we aspire to enact our values of equity and inclusion as integral components of scholarly excellence.
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.