ACLS Leading Edge Fellowships

Leading Edge Fellowships place recent humanities PhDs with nonprofit organizations committed to promoting social justice in their communities.

An informational webinar on the program and application process took place March 3rd. Watch a recording here.

Fellowship Details

• Stipend: $62,500 in year one, and $65,000 in year two, plus health insurance and professional development  funding
• Tenure: 24 months beginning in September 2022
• Applications will be accepted only through the ACLS Online Fellowship Application system. Please do not contact any of the organizations directly.
• Application deadline: March 28, 2022, 9pm EDT

Summary

The American Council of Learned Societies is pleased to announce the fourth competition of the Leading Edge Fellowship program, which demonstrates the potential of humanistic knowledge and methods to solve problems, build capacity, and advance justice and equity in society. Leading Edge Fellowships place recent humanities PhDs with nonprofit organizations promoting social justice in their communities. Fellows take on substantive roles that draw on the skills and capacities honed in the course of earning the humanities PhD, including advanced communication, research, project management, and creative problem solving. This initiative is made possible through the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The fellowships are designed to foster mutually beneficial partnerships between fellows and their hosting organizations. Each applicant may apply for up to two of the available Leading Edge Fellowship opportunities listed below. 

Eligibility

• Applicants must have a PhD that was/will be formally conferred by their university between September 1, 2017, and September 1, 2022. Applicants scheduled to graduate in Spring or Summer 2022 must be prepared to verify, with official university documentation, the successful defense of the dissertation by no later than May 31, 2022.
• Applicants’ PhDs may be in any field in the humanities or humanistic social sciences. See FAQ for further information.*
• Applicants must be authorized to work in the US for the entire duration of the fellowship term. This includes Indigenous individuals residing in the United States through rights associated with the Jay Treaty of 1794, and those who hold DACA status, Temporary Protected Status, or political asylee or refugee status. Neither ACLS nor the host organization can sponsor fellows for visas.

Application Guidelines

Applications must be submitted online and must include:

• A completed application form, including a short answer section about applying humanistic doctoral training to sectors beyond the academy.
• A cover letter tailored to each selected project and addressed to the host organization (1-2 pages). Applicants applying for two positions will submit two distinct cover letters.
• A resume (1-2 pages) and a list of three references. Applicants applying for two positions will submit two resumes and lists of references. No reference letters are required at the time of application.

Host Organizations and Position Descriptions

Download all of the position descriptions as a combined PDF here

*Note: For the purpose of the spring 2022 competition of the Leading Edge Fellowship competition, PhDs in any field in the humanities or humanistic social sciences may apply. The humanities and related social sciences include but are not limited to American studies; anthropology; archaeology; art and architectural history; classics; economics; ethnic studies; film; gender studies; geography; history; languages and literatures; legal studies; linguistics; musicology; philosophy; political science; psychology (excluding clinical or counseling psychology); religious studies; rhetoric, communication, and media studies; sociology; and theater, dance, and performance studies. PhDs in interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary humanistic studies are welcome. PhDs in education are eligible only if the degree’s focus is the anthropology, history, or sociology of education. EdDs are not eligible for the purposes of this program. This program also does not accept applications from students receiving a PhD in any field of pre-professional or applied study, including in the fields of business, public policy or public administration, education or arts education, clinical or counseling psychology, creative writing, journalism, library sciences, law, social work, social welfare, urban planning, public health, filmmaking, and performing arts. If your program or department supports degrees in humanistic fields of inquiry as well as pre-professional degrees, and your work is primarily humanistic in nature and draws on discourses (and dissertation committee members) in the humanities or interpretive social sciences, you may well be eligible. Please write to us at [email protected] if your degree is not listed above, or if you have any questions about your eligibility status. Master’s degrees, even if they are the terminal degree in the field, will not be accepted as substitutes for the PhD.