Deadline: October 29, 2025
Applications are open for the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship 2025-2026. ACLS invites applications for Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships, which provide a year of support for doctoral students preparing to embark on innovative dissertation research projects in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. This program is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
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.
Benefits
- 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.
Eligibility
Applicants must:
- Be a PhD student in a humanities or social science department in the United States.
- Be able to take up a full year (9-12 months) of sustained specialized research and training, released from normal coursework, assistantships, and all teaching responsibilities.
- Have completed at least two years and all required coursework in the PhD programs in which they are currently enrolled by the start of the fellowship term.
- Have not advanced to PhD candidacy/ABD status prior to January 1, 2025.
- Have not previously applied for this fellowship more than once.
Evaluation Criteria
Reviewers in this program are asked to evaluate all eligible proposals on the following criteria:
- The potential of the project to advance the field(s) of study in which it is proposed and make an original and significant contribution to knowledge.
- The potential of the project to challenge scholarly convention and/or expand the prevailing norms of what constitutes important scholarship through its innovative format or formats, its novel methodology, subject matter, or theoretical framework, or its meaningful engagement with an interdisciplinary and/or community partner. ACLS seeks applicants who have a strong grasp of the existing norms and trends in their primary discipline of study, and who have taken advantage of the opportunities available in their department and campus to advance their training and scholarly projects.
- The feasibility of the proposed project and the likelihood that the applicant will execute the work within the proposed time frame (during and after the fellowship term).
- The project’s thoughtful engagement with communities that are historically underrepresented in higher education, and the potential for this experience to shape research and scholarly practice.
Application
Applications must be submitted online and must include:
- Completed application form.
- Proposal (no more than seven pages, double spaced, with one-inch margins, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font, including any footnotes or endnotes).
- The applicant should describe the aims of their research and clearly explain how they will advance those aims during the fellowship period.
- The proposal should also include a description of the training, workshops, travel, research permissions, or anything else the applicant feels will be necessary to advance the project during the fellowship term. For any of these items, but especially in the case of research permissions, how will you go about securing them?
- If the applicant has already identified an external mentor, please note the mentor in the proposal and describe how that individual was selected. If the mentor is yet to be determined, please provide a brief description of what qualities and capacities you will seek within a mentor. What kinds of perspectives would this mentor bring to your project?
- The proposal must describe the applicant’s innovative approach to their dissertation project and make a compelling argument for why the timing of the fellowship would be ideal for their proposed research and training and within the context of the full timeline of their doctoral studies. Applicants should also detail how they will measure their own success in the fellowship year.
- The proposal must describe the full scope of the scholarly output of the dissertation to allow reviewers to consider the entire project. For example, if the applicant is proposing to build a public-facing online archive, what other scholarly materials (A multi-chapter written dissertation? A series of articles?) will accompany the proposed fellowship-year activities?
- Optional: Up to two additional pages of images, musical scores, or other similar supporting non-text materials, without annotation
- A one-page timeline, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font, outlining fellowship year activity with provisional sketch of post-fellowship trajectory, outlining the time leading up to the completion of the dissertation. All applicants must use the timeline template provided by ACLS.
- Bibliography (without annotation, single-spaced, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font, no more than two pages, with one-inch margins)
- Short personal statement (no more than two pages, double spaced, with one-inch margins, in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font) describing your journey as a scholar and how your work comes together at the nexus of personal experience, research interests, and desire to shift the forms and formats of academic research.
- A brief work sample (no more than fifteen pages total, double spaced, with one-inch margins, including any images and 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.
- One letter of recommendation. The letter must come from the applicant’s dissertation advisor, or a faculty member eligible to be the advisor.
- A statement from the applicant’s institution (preferably from the applicant’s department chair, director of graduate studies, or dean). The provided form will ask the institutional representative to attest that (1) if the applicant holds a multi-year financial award from the institution and a fellowship is awarded, this support would be paused for the duration of the fellowship and the applicant would be allowed to retain and resume the remainder of that support in subsequent years; (2) the institution will allow the fellow to remain enrolled during the fellowship year and will waive tuition and fees; and (3) the intention of the fellowship is to promote non-traditional direction setting for the sake of valuing innovations in scholarly methods and subject, and the institution believes that its graduate curriculum and progress-charting for students can respect and accommodate this exploration of non-traditional approaches to scholarship.
For more information, visit Mellon/ACLS Fellowship.
