Deadline:
September 30, 2025
Location(s)
United States of America
Harvard University
Overview
A fellowship year at Harvard Radcliffe Institute is an opportunity to step away from usual routines and dive deeply into a project.
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—known as Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary exploration. We bring students, scholars, artists, and practitioners together to pursue curiosity-driven research, expand human understanding, and grapple with questions that demand insight from across disciplines.
Details
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. Fellows join a uniquely interdisciplinary and creative community. Radcliffe supports engaged scholarship, where fellows develop new tools and methods, challenge artistic and scholarly conventions, and illuminate our past and our present. We welcome applications from scholars and artists proposing innovative work that confronts pressing social and policy issues and seeking to engage audiences beyond academia.
Application Details
Our online application for the 2026–2027 fellowship year is now available.
- The deadline for applications in humanities, social sciences, and creative arts is September 11, 2025, 11:59 PM ET.
- The deadline for applications in science, engineering, and mathematics is September 30, 2025, 11:59 ET.
Applicants may apply as individuals or in groups of two people working on the same project. We seek diversity across 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.
About the Fellowship Program
The Radcliffe Fellowship Program supports 50 scholars, artists, and public intellectuals who have demonstrated records of achievement in their respective fields and show great promise for future contributions.
Throughout the year, fellows convene regularly to share their work in progress, supporting one another in various intellectual groups and building connections through social events. They benefit from access to Harvard’s libraries and archives, to professional development opportunities, and to Harvard college students through participating in the Radcliffe Research Partnership Program. In this program, students intellectually engage with fellows and their projects by researching sources, reviewing book chapters, discussing new approaches to projects, and more.
Fellowship Program Details
Radcliffe supports engaged scholarship. We welcome applications from scholars and artists proposing innovative work that confronts pressing social and policy issues and seeking to engage audiences beyond academia.
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.
We welcome proposals relevant to the Institute’s multi-year focus areas, which include the following:
- Academic freedom and connecting across difference, especially proposals addressing issues of intellectual diversity, political polarization, peace and conflict, inequality, and other policy issues as they relate to free inquiry at higher education institutions, as well as proposals that constructively challenge disciplinary orthodoxies or advance new and potentially transformative perspectives or approaches.
- Climate change, especially proposals addressing critical questions of impact and equity.
In addition, we welcome proposals in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics directly impacted by federal research funding cuts.
Opportunity is About
Eligibility
Candidates should be from:
Description of Ideal Candidate
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. Although our fellows come from many different backgrounds, they are united by their demonstrated excellence, collegiality, and creativity.
We welcome applications from a broad range of fields and perspectives. The strength of our fellowship program is its diversity.
The following areas are of particular interest:
- Radcliffe supports engaged scholarship. We welcome applications from scholars, artists, and practitioners proposing innovative work that confronts pressing social and policy issues and seeking to engage audiences beyond academia.
- We welcome proposals relevant to the Institute’s focus areas, which include:
- Law, education, and justice
- Youth leadership and civic engagement
- Legacies of slavery
- 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.
- Interdisciplinary exchange is a hallmark of the Radcliffe Fellowship, and we welcome proposals that take advantage of our uniquely diverse intellectual community by engaging with concepts and ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries.
Dates
Deadline: September 30, 2025
Cost/funding for participants
What stipend will I receive if selected as a Harvard Radcliffe Fellow?
Fellows receive a stipend of $78,000 plus an additional $5,000 to cover project expenses. Please note that if you are a US citizen or permanent resident coming from a home institution based in the US, you can opt to have your stipend paid through your home institution or to you directly.
Is there additional funding available?
Harvard Radcliffe Fellows may also be eligible to receive relocation, housing, and childcare funds to aid them in making a smooth transition to Radcliffe. Healthcare support is made available as needed. If fellows would like to hire Harvard undergraduate students as Research Partners, we will cover their hourly wages.
Un-save Opportunity
Internships, scholarships, student conferences and competitions.
