W. Mellon Foundation Fellowships Program

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds postdoctoral fellowships and doctoral training at selected universities (by invitation). The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, founded in 1969, is a private a not-for-profit corporation with assets of $6.5 billion that awards over $286 million in grants annually.

In addition, the foundation has initiated a number of programs overseen by institutions that receive individual applications. These programs are described below:

· Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Early Career Fellowships (American Council of Learned Societies)

The Fellowship provides a one-year term stipend of $24,000, plus funds for research costs of up to $3,000 and for university fees of up to $5,000. Approximately 65 Fellowships are awarded annually. These Fellowships are to assist graduate students in the humanities and related social sciences in the last year of PhD dissertation writing. This program aims to encourage timely completion of the PhD Applicants must be prepared to complete their dissertations within the period of their fellowship tenure or shortly thereafter.

Eligible applicants must be PhD candidates in a humanities or social science department in the United States. Students completing master's degrees are not eligible, even if they are the terminal degree in the field. Applicants must have all requirements for the PhD except the dissertation completed before beginning fellowship tenure, and must be no more than six years in the degree program.

· Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (Social Science Research Council)

The Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) Program assists graduate students in the humanities and social sciences to formulate research proposals for their doctoral dissertations within interdisciplinary research fields of the humanities and social sciences.

Each year, pairs of tenured professors--each at a different US doctoral degree-granting university--are invited to propose interdisciplinary fields of research for student training. The DPDF Selection Committee then selects five research fields. Graduate students who are beginning to plan dissertation research projects, usually in their 2nd and 3rd years of graduate study, apply to one of the five research fields. Sixty applicants (twelve per field) are selected to participate in two workshops designed by the faculty field research directors: one in the late spring, which prepares the students to undertake summer research that will inform the design of their dissertation proposals, and the other in the fall, which helps students to employ their summer research experiences in writing dissertation and research funding proposals. During the summer, between the workshops, students undertake pre-dissertation research with support of up to $5,000 to cover expenses. Each faculty research director is provided $10,000. All costs of faculty and student workshop participation are covered by the SSRC.

The program is administered by the Social Science Research Council and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

· IHR Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in the Humanities (Institute of Historical Research, University of London)

The Institute of Historical Research offers fellowships funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for both pre-dissertation and dissertation research in the humanities using original sources. One of the purposes of this fellowship program is to help doctoral candidates in the humanities who may otherwise not have opportunities or encouragement to work with original source materials in the United Kingdom.

Seven pre-dissertation fellowships in the humanities are offered to eligible candidates who wish to spend time in the UK for preliminary examinations of primary sources of archival material in order to draw up and refine a dissertation proposal. The fellowships are available to students registered in a doctoral program in the US or Canada. Candidates must have completed their coursework and oral examinations by the time the research visit is taken. The total value of each fellowship is $5,000.

Five dissertation fellowships in the humanities are also offered to candidates who wish to spend time in the UK carrying out archival research for their dissertations. The fellowships are open to students registered in a doctoral program in a graduate school in the US or Canada. Candidates for these awards must be working on their dissertation, which has already been formally approved. The total value of these fellowships is $25,000.

· International Dissertation Field Research Fellowships (IDRF) Program (Social Science Research Council in partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies)

The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) program supports graduate students in the humanities and social sciences conducting dissertation research outside the United States. The program promotes research that is situated in a specific discipline and geographical region and is engaged with interdisciplinary and cross-regional perspectives. Seventy-five fellowships will be awarded in 2009 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Fellowships provide support for nine to twelve months of dissertation research. Individual awards are approximately $20,000. No awards will be made for proposals requiring less than nine months of on-site research.

The program is administered by the Social Science Research Council in partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies.

· Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources (Council on Library and Information Resources)

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) offers Fellowships funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for dissertation research in the humanities in original sources. The purposes of this fellowship program are: to help junior scholars in the humanities and related social-science fields gain skill and creativity in developing knowledge from original sources; enable dissertation writers to do research wherever relevant sources may be, rather than just where financial support is available; encourage more extensive and innovative uses of original sources in libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and related repositories in the US and abroad; and provide insight from the viewpoint of doctoral candidates into how scholarly resources can be developed for access most helpfully in the future.

The program offers about fifteen competitively awarded Fellowships a year. Each provides a stipend of $2,000 per month for periods ranging from 9-12 months. Each Fellow will receive an additional $1,000 upon participating in a symposium on research in original sources and submitting a report acceptable to CLIR on the research experience. Thus the maximum award will be $25,000. An applicant must be enrolled in a doctoral program in a graduate school in the United States (master's thesis research is not eligible) and may be of any nationality.

For more information, see www.mellon.org