Graduate Funding Information Service

August 31, 2021

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships

Application Deadline: October 27, 2021, 6pm Pacific Time

  • For ABD PhD candidates in a humanities or social science departments
  • Stipend: $35,000, plus funds for research costs of up to $3,000 and for university fees of up to $5,000
  • Tenure: one year beginning summer 2022

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) invites applications for Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships, which support a year of research and writing to help advanced graduate students in the humanities and related social sciences in the last year of PhD dissertation writing. The program encourages timely completion of the PhD. Applicants must be prepared to complete their dissertations within the period of their fellowship tenure and no later than August 31, 2023. A grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supports this program.

ACLS will award up to 50 fellowships in this competition for a one-year term beginning between June and September 2022 for the 2022-23 academic year. The fellowship may be carried out in residence at the fellow’s home institution, abroad, or at another appropriate site for the research. These fellowships may not be held concurrently with any other fellowship or grant.

The total award of up to $43,000 includes a stipend plus additional funds for university fees and research support. In addition to the monetary support that the fellowship offers, Dissertation Completion Fellows may apply to participate in a seminar on preparing for the academic job market. The seminar takes place over three days in the fall of the fellowship year.

ACLS believes that humanistic scholarship benefits from inclusivity of voices, narratives, and subjects that have historically been underrepresented or under-studied in academe. We especially welcome applications from PhD candidates whose perspectives and/or research projects cultivate greater openness to new sources of knowledge, innovation in scholarly communication, and, above all, responsiveness to the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities, including (but not limited to) Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous communities from around the world; people with disabilities; queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people; and people of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We also believe that institutional diversity enhances the scholarly enterprise, and we encourage applications from PhD candidates from all types of institutions in the United States.

Eligibility

  • Be a PhD candidate in a humanities or social science department in the United States.
    • The Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship program does not accept applications from students receiving professional or applied PhDs, terminal degrees that are not a PhD (such as an EdD or MFA), or PhDs outside of humanities and social science departments. See award site for more information.
  • Have completed all requirements for the PhD except the dissertation (i.e., obtained ABD status) by the application deadline.
  • Be no more than six years into the degree program at the time of application. This includes time spent earning an MA within that program. In special circumstances, an applicant who is in their seventh year may petition to have this eligibility requirement extended by one year
    • Put another way, if the current academic year is your sixth year in the program, or if you’ve been in the program for fewer years, then you are eligible to apply.
  • Not currently hold or have previously held a dissertation completion fellowship.
  • Have not previously applied for this fellowship more than once.

For complete information about this opportunity, including how to apply, click here.