ACLS Invites Applications for African Humanities Fellowships
The American Council of Learned Societies, a private nonprofit federation of seventy-three national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. Advancing scholarship by awarding fellowships and strengthening relations among learned societies is central to the council's work. Other activities include support for scholarly conferences, reference works, and scholarly communication innovations.
To that end, the council's African Humanities Program seeks to reinvigorate the humanities in Africa through fellowship competitions and related activities in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. In partnership with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, AHP provides qualified African scholars with an integrated set of opportunities to develop their individual capacities and help promote the formation of scholarly networks. The program also supports the Carnegie Corporation's efforts to develop and retain African academics at universities in Africa.
The mission of the program is to encourage and enable the production of new knowledge and new directions for research, strengthen the capacity of early-career researchers and faculty at African universities, and build the field of humanities by establishing networks for scholarly communication across Africa and with Africanists worldwide.
Fellowship stipends allow recipients to take an academic year free from teaching and other duties for completion of his/her PhD dissertation, the revision of a dissertation for publication, or to conduct a first major research project after the PhD. Fellows are also eligible for additional benefits such as residential stays for writing, manuscript development workshops, and publication support.
Each fellow may request a residential stay at an African institute for advanced study, but residencies must be taken at an institute outside the home country. Currently, AHP Fellows may take residencies at six institutes, from South Africa to Senegal, Ghana to Tanzania.
Fellows are invited to submit their manuscripts to the AHP Publications series, a collaboration with UNISA Press in Pretoria, South Africa. In addition, fellows may apply to attend a manuscript-development workshop to discuss their manuscripts with AHP mentors and other fellows in an intensive, weeklong retreat. Many authors use these discussions to guide their final revisions before submitting manuscripts for publication.
AHP also partners with the African Studies Association every year to bring select AHP Fellows to the ASA annual meeting.
For further details on eligibility, submission of applications, and selection criteria, see the ACLS website.
