Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship

Syracuse University is pleased to announce the launch of the Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship competition. Click on the link here to view more information.

  • Internal Submission Deadline: Friday, August 30, 2019
  • Funding Organization’s Deadline: Friday, September 27, 2019
  • Award Cycle: Yearly
  • Discipline/Subject Area: Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences
  • Funding Available: 300,000.00

Serious interdisciplinary research often requires established scholar-teachers to pursue formal substantive and methodological training in addition to the PhD. The Mellon New Directions Fellowships assist faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who seek to acquire systematic training outside their own areas of special interest. The program is intended to enable scholars in the humanities to work on problems that interest them most, at an appropriately advanced level of sophistication. In addition to facilitating the work of individual faculty members, these awards should benefit scholarship in the humanities more generally by encouraging the highest standards in cross-disciplinary research.

Note: This fellowship does not aim to facilitate short-term outcomes, such as completion of a book. Rather, it is a longer-term investment in the scholar’s intellectual range and productivity.

Recipients: The Foundation has awarded New Directions Fellowships since 2002. View a complete list of recipients here.

Terms of the Awards: Candidates will be faculty members who were awarded doctorates within the last six to twelve years (2007 to 2013, inclusive) and whose research interests call for formal training in a discipline other than the one in which they are expert.

    • Such training may consist of coursework or other programs of organized study.
    • It may take place either at fellows’ home institutions or elsewhere, as appropriate.
    • Although it is anticipated that many fellows will seek to acquire deeper knowledge of other fields within the broadly defined sphere of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, proposals to study disciplines farther afield are eligible.

The principal criteria for selection are:

    • the overall significance of the research,
    • the case for the importance of extra-disciplinary training for furthering the research,
    • the candidate’s likely ability to derive satisfactory results from the training proposed, and
    • a well-developed plan for acquiring the necessary training within a reasonable period of time.

Fellows will receive:

    • the equivalent of one academic year’s salary,
    • two summers of additional support, each at the equivalent to two-ninths of the previous academic year salary, and
    • tuition or course fees or equivalent direct costs associated with the fellows’ training programs.

To permit flexibility in meeting individual scholars’ needs, funds may be expended over a period not to exceed three full academic years following the date of the award. The Mellon Foundation also expects the fellow’s home institution to use budgetary relief resulting from the award for academic purposes, preferably in the fellow’s department.