2013-2014 African Humanities Program, in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), with financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, announces competitions for:

·         Dissertation-completion fellowships in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda

·         Early-career postdoctoral fellowships in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa

Stipends are $10,000 for dissertation-completion Fellows and $17,000 for postdoctoral Fellows, plus an additional $1,000 per Fellow for books and media at both award levels. Fellowships release recipients from teaching and other duties for an academic year to permit full-time research and writing. (They may be used to "buy time.") Recipients of both kinds of fellowship are also eligible for further support in the form of a residency at a participating research center in Africa for a sustained period of writing.

Approximately forty fellowships will be awarded annually in all five countries combined. Awards will be decided by an international committee of distinguished scholars in the humanities.

Eligible Applicants

·         Dissertation applicants must be doctoral candidates in the final year of writing the dissertation. (No dissertation fellowships are available in South Africa.)

·         Postdoctoral candidates must be scholars who have obtained the Ph.D. within the past eight years.

·         All applicants must be citizens of a sub-Saharan African country residing and working in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda.

Eligible Projects

Proposed projects must be in the humanities, defined by the study of history, language, and culture, and by qualitative approaches in research. The list of humanities disciplines includes anthropology, archaeology, studies of the fine and performing arts, history, linguistics, literature studies, studies of religion, and philosophy. Projects in social sciences such as economics, sociology, or political science, as well as in law or international relations, are not eligible unless they are clearly humanistic in content and focus.

Selection Criteria

·         The intrinsic interest and substantive merit of the work proposed

·         The clarity of the intellectual agenda

·         The feasibility of the work plan

·         The record of achievement of a postdoctoral scholar and the promise of a Ph.D. candidate

·         The contribution the work is likely to make to scholarship on the continent and worldwide

The African Humanities Program seeks to strengthen humanities scholarship in Africa:

·         By promoting diversity in terms of gender and historical disadvantage, along with diversity in disciplines, institutions, and regions. Women are especially encouraged to apply.

·         By making research opportunities available to staff at African universities.

Application Deadline: 1 November 2013

Application forms and instructions for the 2013-2014 competition are available at www.acls.orglprograms/ahp or may be requested by email at ahp@acls.org