BC Ricci Institute–Harvard-Yenching Institute Joint Visiting Researcher Fellowship Grant

Funder: The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College

The BC Ricci Institute–Harvard-Yenching Institute Joint Visiting Researcher Fellowship offers a unique opportunity for full-time faculty from Asia-based institutions to conduct research at two prestigious institutes in Boston during the 2026-2027 academic year. This six-month fellowship emphasizes the study of East Asian culture and provides access to extensive library resources. Eligible applicants must hold a doctoral degree and focus on interdisciplinary approaches within the humanities and social sciences.

The Institutes
The Ricci Institute collections include over 100,000 volumes. The majority of these volumes concern traditional China with a special concentration on the Jesuits missions, East–West cultural exchange, and the history of the Ming–Qing period, roughly from the 16th–19th centuries. In addition to these volumes there are more than 400,000 digital documents, photos, manuscripts, microfilms, paintings, and artefacts, including fifteen special archival collections. For more detailed information on the Ricci Institute’s collections please see the online catalogue. The Ricci Institute Library has added thousands of volumes annually. About 60% of the volumes are in Chinese, with additional materials in Japanese, Korean, and Manchu, as well as in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, and Latin.
The Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI) is an independent foundation dedicated to advancing higher education in Asia in the humanities and social sciences, with special attention to the study of Asian culture. The Institute offers fellowship programs to faculty members and doctoral students at leading East, Southeast, and South Asian universities in all fields of the humanities and social sciences. Closely connected with the HYI, the Harvard-Yenching Library has held a rich collection of research materials and rare books in East Asian languages since its inception in 1928. With its 1.6 million volumes in more than a dozen languages, the Harvard-Yenching Library holds the most comprehensive East Asian collection of any American university and has become the largest academic library for East Asian studies in the Western world.
BC Ricci Institute–Harvard-Yenching Institute Joint Visiting Researcher Fellowship Program
The Boston College Ricci Institute and the Harvard-Yenching Institute invite applications for a Joint Visiting Researcher Fellowship in the 2026-2027 academic year for full-time faculty members at Asia-based universities or research institutions in Asia, regardless of citizenship. The purpose of the Fellowship is to bring faculty at a crucial stage of their academic career to Boston for a six-month period of research, to be conducted at both Institutions.
Successful applicants will join the community of researchers at the Ricci Institute and Harvard-Yenching Institute and will have access to all Boston College and Harvard University libraries.

Eligibility

The Fellowship is open to applicants who have earned doctoral degrees and are full-time faculty members at Asia-based universities or full-time research fellows at research institutions (e.g., Academia Sinica, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Toyo Bunko and Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences). Scholars whose work focuses on the study of East Asian culture from a wide array of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (including interdisciplinary approaches) are eligible to apply. These include, but are not limited to, anthropology, archaeology, art, religion, cultural studies, economic history, geography and cartography, the history of science, music, and/or art, global history, language and literature, legal history, philosophy, sociology and politics.