SSRC Funding for Graduate Students

The following program could be of value to students preparing for work in museum/material culture studies. From a notice circulated here at Indiana University--Bloomington:

Social Science Research Council
Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF)
Awards of up to $5,000
Deadline: March 1, 2007

The Social Science Research Council is pleased to announce the Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF), a strategic fellowship program designed to help graduate students in the humanities and social sciences formulate doctoral dissertation proposals that are intellectually pointed, amenable to completion in a reasonable time frame, and competitive in fellowship competitions. Funding for the program is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Graduate students apply to one of five research fields led by two directors; each group is made up of ten to twelve graduate students. Fellows participate in two workshops, one in the late spring that helps prepare them to undertake predissertation research on their topics, and one in the early fall, designed to help them synthesize their summer research and to draft proposals for dissertation funding. For the 2007 application cycle, the eligible research fields and respective research directors are:

Black Atlantic Studies
- Andrew Apter, Professor of History, UCLA
- Percy Hintzen, Professor of African-American Studies, UC Berkeley

Rethinking Europe: Religion, Ethnicity, Nation
- John Bowen, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University
- Rogers Brubaker, Professor of Sociology, UCLA

The Political Economy of Redistribution
- Jonathan Rodden, Associate Professor of Political Science, MIT
- Erik Wibbels, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Washington

Visual Culture
- Anne Higonnet, Professor of Art History, Columbia University
- Vanessa Schwartz, Professor of History, University of Southern California

Water Sustainability: Society, Politics, Culture
- Steven Caton, Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University
- Ben Orlove, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, UC Davis

SUPPORT PROVIDED: Sixty fellowships of approximately $5,000 will be awarded in 2007 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Fellowships will provide support for predissertation during summer 2007.

ELIGIBILITY: The program is open to full-time graduate students in the humanities and social sciences--regardless of citizenship--enrolled in doctoral programs in the United States. Further eligibility exceptions are detailed online. Graduate students should be in the early phase of their research, generally in the 2nd or 3rd year of their doctoral program.

APPLICATION INFORMATION: To access the online application, please visit http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf/. Applications must be complete and submitted online before 9:00 pm (EST) on March 1, 2007. The reference letters must also be submitted online by the same deadline. In addition, undergraduate and graduate transcripts must be sent to the SSRC by mail and received by March 1, 2007. Applicants will be notified of the competition results in April 2007.

For further information about each of the research fields, application and eligibility requirements, please visit the DPDF Program online at http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf/ or contact dpdf@ssrc.org.