Rome Prize (American Academy in Rome)

Each winner receives a stipend, a bedroom with a private bathroom and a private workspace: a studio for artists and an office for scholars. Winners are also invited to the Rome Sustainable Food Project, which serves lunch and dinner from Monday to Friday at no cost. Half-term winners receive 16,000 US dollars and full-term winners 30,000.

A full-term fellowship usually runs from early September to the following June; half-term winners can ask to start in September or February. Winners pay their own travel to Rome, but the first stipend payment arrives four to six weeks before the fellowship begins and is larger than the rest to help with that cost. Health insurance is required for the winner and anyone who comes with them.

The prize is given in ancient studies; architecture; design; East-West intersections in the arts, ideas and attitudes; environmental arts and humanities; historic preservation and conservation; landscape architecture; literature; medieval studies; modern Italian studies; musical composition; Renaissance and early modern studies; and the visual arts.

The environmental arts and humanities prize is meant for collaborative pairs, an artist and a scholar or any other partnership with a working relationship that already exists. Its two winners each receive a full stipend and their own living space and share a workspace. Joint applications are also possible in the other fields when the work is genuinely collaborative.

Most categories are open only to United States citizens at the time of application. The environmental arts and humanities prize and the postdoctoral fellowships in ancient, medieval, early modern and modern Italian studies are also open to foreign nationals who have lived in the United States for the three years before the deadline.

Graduate students in the humanities can apply for the predoctoral fellowships only once they are all but dissertation. Undergraduates cannot apply, and past winners cannot apply again. Winners may hold other fellowships at the same time, but they must declare them, and they may not hold a full-time job during the fellowship.

Winners are expected to live at the Academy and take part in its intellectual and community life. At orientation each gives a five-minute presentation of their project; during the year each gives a twenty-minute shoptalk on current work and attends the others. Before leaving, winners submit a one-page final report.

Absences are limited: no more than three weeks for a half term and six for a full term. The Academy welcomes spouses, partners and children, and winners with children under eighteen live in subsidised apartments nearby, though families should expect extra costs. Italian is not required, and the Academy offers a subsidised intensive course on arrival.