Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program for 2024-2025 Year

The online application for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program is now open. 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 Harvard Radcliffe Institute 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. They seek diversity along many dimensions, including discipline, career stage, race and ethnicity, country of origin, gender and sexual orientation, and ideological perspective. Although our fellows come from many different backgrounds, they are united by their demonstrated excellence, collegiality, and creativity.

Radcliffe supports engaged scholarship. They welcome applications from scholars and artists proposing innovative work that confronts pressing social and policy issues and seeking to engage audiences beyond academia.

The proposals have to be 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 communities
• Legacies of slavery

Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program Benefits

The Harvard Radcliffe Fellows benefit from a uniquely interdisciplinary and creative community that each year spans the sciences, arts, humanities, and professions. This diversity of approaches and expertise sets our program apart from other fellowship opportunities. With access to Harvard’s unparalleled resources, Harvard Radcliffe Fellows can dive deeply into their projects, while engaging with scholars, writers, and practitioners with whom they might not otherwise have the opportunity to connect. Along with their cohort, Radcliffe Fellows join an exceptional network of alumni making an impact in their professional fields and in the larger world.

In addition to the stipend, project expense allowance, and additional funds to aid in relocation mentioned above, fellows receive office or studio space in Byerly Hall–on Radcliffe Yard–and full-time Harvard appointments as visiting fellows, granting them access to Harvard University’s libraries, housing, and athletic facilities. If fellows would like to hire Harvard undergraduate students as Research Partners, Radcliffe will cover their hourly wages. During the fellowship program, fellows are also offered several professional development opportunities.

Although amounts have not been set for fellows in the 2024-2025 class, information on current benefits is available here.

Eligibility Requirements for Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program

No matter their field, Harvard Radcliffe Fellows demonstrate an extraordinary level of accomplishment.

Humanities and Social sciences

Applicants in the humanities and social sciences must:

1. 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 (December 2022 for the 2024-25 fellowship year).
2. Have published a monograph or at least two articles in refereed journals or edited collections.

Science, engineering, and mathematics

Applicants in science, engineering, and mathematics must:

1. Have received their doctorate in the area of the proposed project at least two years prior to their appointment as a fellow (December 2022 for the 2024-25 fellowship year).
2. Have published at least five articles in refereed journals. Most science, engineering, and math fellows have published dozens of articles.

** This is not intended to serve as a post-doctoral fellowship. Applicants must demonstrate a strong body of independent research and writing.

Creative arts

Applicants in the creative arts must meet discipline-specific eligibility requirements, as outlined below:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Fiction and Nonfiction: Applicants in these disciplines must have one of the following:
   1. one or more published books;
   2. a contract for the publication of a book-length manuscript; or
   3. at least three shorter works (longer than newspaper articles) published.
4. 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.
5. Journalism: Applicants in this discipline are required to have worked professionally as a journalist for at least five years.
6. 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.
7. 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.

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

For more information, visit the program website.

How To Apply For The Fellowship Program

Interested in the program, you can fill the online application for the 2024–2025 fellowship year.