Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows

Jennifer Cossyleon F’19 presents at a Community Change’s Power-Building Convening in Los Angeles, CA in January 2020, with housing community partners and residents.

The Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows program demonstrates the dynamic potential of the humanities PhD by placing recent PhDs in professional roles with nonprofit and government organizations in the fields of arts management, development, communications, public administration, policy, and digital media. From 2011 to 2020, the program placed recent humanities PhDs in staff positions at a diverse range of partnering agencies in government and the non-profit sector for two-year appointments. The fellowships were made possible through the generous support of the Mellon Foundation.

Over the course of a decade, ACLS named nearly 190 Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows, who joined organizations across the country to pursue substantive portfolios of work in the fields of policy, community development, arts and culture, media, and international affairs. Our report, Public Pathways: Lessons about PhD Careers from 10 Years of Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows, provides insight through the lens of the program into the career paths of humanities PhDs, the value of humanities skills to employers, and how faculty, departments, leadership, and graduate students themselves can support a broad range of futures for humanities PhDs.

Nana Kaneko F’18 shares her experience as a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow

Learn more about fellows and their work.