ACLS Fellowships

ACLS invites proposals from scholars in every discipline of the humanities and interpretive social sciences, on any period, world region or humanistic method. The project should lead to a major piece of scholarly work by the applicant, such as a monograph, one or more articles, a publicly engaged humanities project, a digital research project or a critical edition, and it can be at an early, middle or late stage.

The award is for full-time research and writing, so no teaching, administration or other major duties are allowed during the fellowship. It is portable and can be held anywhere suitable. Fellows can also choose to spend part or all of the term at one of the member centres of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, without a separate application.

The stipend is 60,000 US dollars for twelve months and 30,000 for the minimum of six months, with terms in between paid at 5,000 dollars a month. Independent scholars, adjunct faculty and faculty in teaching-intensive roles receive a supplement of 3,000 to 6,000 dollars for costs such as research support, manuscript workshops, conference attendance, health insurance and dependent care.

The fellowship may be combined with sabbatical pay and other grants, within limits: for tenured and tenure-track scholars, stipend and salary together may not exceed a full academic year's salary, and for others, combined income may not exceed 150% of the award. For the 2026-27 competition, the term must start between 1 July 2027 and 1 July 2028 and end by 31 December 2028.

ACLS/New York Public Library fellowships are residential sub-fellowships for projects that need the collections of the Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, worth 90,000 dollars, with residence from September to May; applicants must also apply separately to the Library's Cullman Center. Finalists from teaching-intensive institutions who are not chosen for a fellowship may receive a 5,000-dollar project development grant.

Named fellowships are awarded from the same pool without a separate application, among them fellowships in Chinese history, ancient American art, music studies, American history and Chinese or comparative literature. In 2026-27 an anonymous funder added ten fellowships for scholars facing official constraints on their research because their fields are contested.

The programme does not support creative work (fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, graphic novels, documentary films, musical composition or plays), textbooks, mainly pedagogical projects, translation without substantial scholarly apparatus, dissertation research, children's books, inventories of collections, guidebooks, or social science that does not address humanistic questions or use humanistic methods.