Funding

Partial / Stipend

Program dates

Jul 1, 2027 – Dec 31, 2028

Fellowship•Remote

ACLS Fellowships

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)

Application Deadline

September 17, 2026

Official Page

The American Council of Learned Societies runs an open competition for scholars in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences. ACLS is a nonprofit federation of 86 scholarly organizations formed in 1919, and 2026 marks its hundredth year of grantmaking to individual scholars. The programme is paid for mainly out of the ACLS endowment. The 2026-27 cycle will award at least 60 fellowships, about half of them to early career scholars; in the most recent completed year ACLS gave roughly US$3.5 million to 63 scholars. What the award buys is a block of protected time: six to twelve consecutive months of full-time research and writing, at whatever site suits the project. The finished work can take many forms, among them a monograph, articles, a digital project, a critical edition, or publicly engaged scholarship.

Benefits & funding

  • US$60,000 stipend for a twelve-month term.
  • US$30,000 for the minimum six-month term. Terms in between are pro-rated at US$5,000 a month.
  • Supplements of US$3,000 to US$6,000 for independent scholars, adjunct faculty and faculty in teaching-intensive roles, covering research costs, manuscript development workshops, learned society conferences, health insurance and dependent care.
  • Project Development Grants of US$5,000 for finalists based at teaching-intensive institutions, with no separate application.
  • An optional residency at an international research centre through the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, taken inside the award term.
  • Named fellowships sit inside the same competition and are designated for particular fields, among them Chinese history, ancient American art, Arab and Latin American studies, American history, music studies and comparative literature.
  • The award is portable. ACLS does not require residence at a host institution.
  • Scholars whose work depends on the collections of the New York Public Library can instead apply to the ACLS/NYPL fellowships, a residential award with a US$90,000 stipend and its own deadline of 25 September 2026.

Eligibility

  • A PhD in the humanities or the social sciences, conferred before the application deadline. A PhD in Education qualifies; a Doctor of Education degree does not. An established scholar who can demonstrate the equivalent of a PhD in publications and professional experience may also qualify.
  • Every postdoctoral career stage is eligible, on or off the tenure track.
  • One of the following statuses: US citizen; permanent resident; an Indigenous individual residing in the United States through rights associated with the Jay Treaty of 1794; DACA recipient; asylee; refugee; or holder of Temporary Protected Status in the United States.
  • A foreign national who has been living in the United States or US territories for the three years immediately preceding the application deadline is also eligible, provided they do not establish permanent residence outside the United States during the fellowship.
  • Not more than one ACLS or ACLS-joint award may normally be accepted in any one competition year, and an applicant may not seek support for activities ACLS has already funded.
  • The competition does not fund fiction, creative writing, autobiography, memoir, graphic novels, documentary film, performing arts, textbooks, projects centred on pedagogy, translation without scholarly apparatus, dissertation research, children’s literature, collection inventories, guidebooks or policy studies.

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    USA

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  • Education required

    PhD

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Application process

  1. 1
    Register in the ACLS online fellowship and grant administration system (OFA) with an email address or an ORCID iD. Applications for the 2026-27 competition opened in July 2026.
  2. 2
    Write the proposal: three pages maximum, single-spaced, 11-point Arial or Helvetica, footnotes included.
  3. 3
    Prepare a one-page work plan, a two-page bibliography, a two-page publication list and a one-page personal statement. Up to two further pages of images, scores or similar material may be attached.
  4. 4
    Submit by 17 September 2026, 5:00 PM Eastern Time. The 2026-27 competition asks for no writing sample and no reference letters.
  5. 5
    Peer reviewers assess the applications. Results are announced in April 2027, and reviewer comments reach applicants by August 2027.
  6. 6
    Take up the award between 1 July 2027 and 1 July 2028, and finish by 31 December 2028. Beyond that window the award cannot be deferred.

Program timeline

  1. July 2026

    Applications open for the 2026-27 competition

  2. Application deadline

    17 September 2026, 5:00 PM ET

  3. Separate deadline for the ACLS/NYPL residential fellowships

    25 September 2026

  4. Results announced

    April 2027

  5. Window in which an award term must begin

    1 July 2027 to 1 July 2028

  6. Reviewer comments sent to applicants

    August 2027

  7. All fellowship terms must have ended

    31 December 2028