Deadline: November 14, 2024
Applications are open for the Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships in China Studies 2024/2025 (Flexible). In 2024-25, ACLS is offering two types of fellowship for early career scholars to support research, writing, and publicly engaged scholarship. Workshops and events for fellows will be held in 2025 and 2026. Flexible fellowships are financially supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Flexible research fellowships will enable recent PhDs (without tenure and within eight years of the PhD) with heavy teaching and service responsibilities to carry out research and writing towards a significant scholarly product.
Possible project outcomes include, but are not limited to, contributions to the development of one or more of the following: monographs, scholarly articles, conference papers, book chapters, or book on a topic in the humanities or interpretive social sciences. ACLS also encourages projects that have the potential to contribute to:
- Pedagogical tools that make meaningful connections between a scholar’s research and teaching.
- Works that bridge scholarly and creative practice.
- Community-engaged projects grounded in scholarly research but geared toward a public audience. Potential or actual community and/or student engagement with the research project is encouraged, as is the dissemination of the research to audiences across higher education.
Stipend
- Stipend: $15,000 ($5,000 per month) for the equivalent of three months’ work accomplished over a twelve-month period.
Eligibility
- An applicant must hold a PhD from an accredited institution in the United States or Canada, OR be a US or Canadian citizen/permanent resident with a PhD from any accredited institution.
- An applicant must hold a PhD degree conferred no earlier than January 1, 2016.
- If the PhD is not conferred (officially awarded) by the application deadline, the applicant must:
- (At the time of application) have a university official (dissertation advisor or departmental chair) confirm through the OFA system that the applicant is on schedule to complete the PhD by April 15, 2025. This is an online form, not a reference letter.
- (By April 1, 2025) submit a letter from the applicant’s graduate school confirming that the dissertation has been submitted and approved by the graduate school for conferral according to the university calendar. The applicant is responsible for submitting the dissertation on time in order to meet this requirement. The applicant should request that the graduate school send the letter to ACLS at [email protected].
- An applicant who is not a US or Canadian citizen/permanent resident must have an affiliation, or a long-term, regular research or teaching appointment, with a university or college in the United States or Canada.
- Applicants who have obtained tenure, or who have submitted tenure materials for review by the application deadline, are not eligible.
- A working knowledge of Chinese is required, or knowledge of another language used in China studies (e.g., Tibetan, Uyghur) is also acceptable.
Evaluation Criteria
- The research design and intellectual organization of the project.
- The significance of the topic and its potential contribution to China studies.
- The ability of the applicant to accomplish the proposed research, based on academic training and success of previous research projects.
- The feasibility of the plan of work.
Application
Applications must be submitted online and must include:
- A completed application form.
- An application essay (no more than five double-spaces pages in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font). The essay should discuss:
- The aims of the research project – what it is about and what sources are to be examined.
- The significance of the topic and the project’s contribution to the field of China studies.
- The intended contribution of the research to existing literature in your discipline.
- The research design.
- An assessment of the project’s feasibility.
- The nature of results expected.
- A work plan (no more than one double-spaced page in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font). The work plan should include:
- A timeline for the project, including activity during the fellowship period.
- Identification of the individuals (colleagues relevant to project), institutions, and/or sites to be visited, including archives, libraries, and geographical sources, as well as proposed institutional affiliation in China (if any).
- A brief “Plan B” – an explanation of what you will do if you encounter a major obstacle in your plan (e.g., a closed archive, travel restrictions, inaccessible research site).
- A bibliography (no more than two pages, double-spaced between entries in Arial or Helvetica 11-point).
- Optional supporting materials (e.g., images, musical scores, or other similar supporting non-text materials, without annotation) (no more than two pages).
- An applicant’s statement (no more than two double-spaced pages in Arial or Helvetica 11-point font) describing the intellectual trajectory and experiences that brought you to the current stage of academic career and that motivate plans for the future. Applicants without US citizenship/permanent residency who have just graduated from a PhD program in the US or Canada and are not yet employed/affiliated with a university in North America must describe plans for a career in China studies in the United States or Canada. It will strengthen the application to mention applications underway for academic positions, including names of institutions.
- A list of the applicant’s publications (no more than two pages, double-spaced between entries in Arial or Helvetica 11-point).
- No budget is required.
For more information, visit Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships.
