Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship: Humanities, Social Sciences, and Creative Arts Grant

The Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship offers a unique opportunity for scholars, artists, and public intellectuals to engage deeply in their projects within a diverse and interdisciplinary community. Each year, 50 fellowships are awarded, encouraging applications from various fields, including humanities, social sciences, and creative arts. The program emphasizes diversity, collegiality, and creativity, welcoming individual or group applications. Fellows benefit from Harvard's extensive resources, allowing them to challenge conventions and explore innovative ideas.

NOTE: See page for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics here.
Radcliffe Fellowship Program
Radcliffe fellows are exceptional scientists, writers, scholars, public intellectuals, and artists whose work is making a difference in their professional fields and in the larger world.
Based in Radcliffe Yard—a sanctuary in the heart of Harvard University—fellows join a uniquely interdisciplinary and creative community. A fellowship at Radcliffe is an opportunity to step away from usual routines and dive deeply into a project. With access to Harvard’s unparalleled resources, Radcliffe fellows develop new tools and methods, challenge artistic and scholarly conventions, and illuminate our past and our present.
The Radcliffe Fellowship Program awards 50 fellowships each academic year. Applicants may apply as individuals or in a group of two to three people working on the same project. We seek diversity along many dimensions, including discipline, career stage, race and ethnicity, country of origin, gender and sexual orientation, and ideological perspective.
We welcome applications from a broad range of fields and perspectives. The strength of our fellowship program is its diversity.
Focus Areas
We welcome proposals relevant to the Institute’s focus areas, which include:
Reflecting Radcliffe’s unique history and institutional legacy, we welcome proposals that focus on women, gender, and society or draw on the Schlesinger Library’s rich collections.Climate change and its human impacts, especially projects that address the disproportionate impacts of the climate crisis on marginalized or under-resourced communitiesLegacies of slavery
Interdisciplinary exchange is a hallmark of the Radcliffe fellowship. We welcome proposals that take advantage of our uniquely diverse intellectual community by engaging with concepts and ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries.

Eligibility

Applicants in the humanities and social sciences must:Have received their doctorate (or appropriate terminal degree) in the area of their proposed project at least two years prior to their appointment as a fellow.Have published a monograph or at least two articles in refereed journals or edited collections.Applicants in the creative arts must meet discipline-specific eligibility requirements, as outlined below:Film and Video: Applicants in this discipline must have a body of independent work of significant achievement. Such work will typically have been exhibited in galleries or museums, shown in film or video festivals, or broadcast on television.Visual Arts: Applicants in this discipline must show strong evidence of achievement, with a record of at least five years of work as a professional artist, including participation in several curated group shows and at least two professional solo exhibitions.Fiction and Nonfiction: Applicants in these disciplines must have one of the following:one or more published books;a contract for the publication of a book-length manuscript; orat least three shorter works (longer than newspaper articles) published.Poetry: Applicants in this discipline must have had published at least 20 poems in the last five years or published a book of poetry, and must be in the process of completing a manuscript.Journalism: Applicants in this discipline are required to have worked professionally as a journalist for at least five years.Playwriting: Applicants in this discipline must have a significant body of independent work in the form. This will include, most typically, plays produced or under option.Music Composition: It is desirable, but not required, for applicants in music composition to have a PhD or DMA. Most importantly, the applicant must show strong evidence of achievement as a professional artist, with a record of recent performances. Applicants from throughout the world are encouraged to apply. Harvard University typically sponsors J-1 scholar visas for Harvard Radcliffe Fellows. Applicants cannot be students in doctoral or master's programs at the time of application submission unless the dissertation has been accepted and degree is forthcoming (and field specific eligibility requirements have been met). Applicants must demonstrate a strong body of independent work that has been published, exhibited, or performed.You do not need to be affiliated with an academic institution to be eligible to apply.We accept group applications of two or three individuals who propose to work on the same project. As a fellowship group you would spend the year pursuing your group's research interests or project. All group members must meet the eligibility requirements for their fields

Ineligibility

Former Harvard Radcliffe fellows (1999-present) are ineligible to apply.