Social Science Research Council
International Dissertation Research Fellowships, 2007
URL: http://www.ssrc.org/programs/idrf/
Application Deadline:
November 1, 2006.(online application)
In order to be considered, your application must be
complete and in SUBMITTED status by 9:00pm (EST) on November 1, 2006.
Additionally, all accompanying documents [reference letters, language evaluation(s) and
graduate transcript(s)] must also
be received by that time.
About the Program:
The International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) program
supports distinguished graduate students in the humanities and social
sciences conducting dissertation research outside the United States.
Fifty fellowships will be awarded in 2007 with funds provided by the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The IDRF program is committed to scholarship that advances knowledge
about non-U.S. cultures and societies grounded in empirical and
site-specific research (involving fieldwork, research in archival or
manuscript collections, or quantitative data collection). The program
promotes research that is at once located in a specific discipline and
geographical region and engaged with interdisciplinary and
cross-regional perspectives.
Fellowships will provide support for nine to twelve months of
dissertation research. Individual awards will be approximately $20,000.
No awards will be made for proposals requiring less than nine months of
on-site research. The 2007 IDRF fellowship must be held for a single
continuous period within the eighteen months between July 2007 and
December 2008.
The program is administered by the Social Science Research Council in
partnership with the American Council of Learned Societies.
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. Applicants must complete all Ph.D.
requirements except on-site dissertation research by the time the
fellowship begins or by December 2007, whichever comes first.
The program invites proposals for empirical and site-specific
dissertation research outside the United States. It will consider
applications for dissertation research grounded in a single site,
informed by broader cross-regional and interdisciplinary perspectives,
as well as applications for multi-sited, comparative, and transregional
research. Proposals that identify the U.S. as a case for comparative
inquiry are welcome; however, proposals which focus predominantly or
exclusively on the United States are not eligible. Proposals may cover
all periods in history, but must address topics that have relevance to
contemporary issues and debates.
Students enrolled in professional schools (law, business, medicine,
nursing, journalism, social work, etc.) are not eligible. Exceptions may
be made for proposals in the fields of public policy, public health, and
education, but only if research projects from these fields engage
directly with broader theoretical and analytical issues in the
humanities and social sciences. Students who have already received nine
months or more of support for dissertation research in one country are
not eligible to apply to the IDRF to extend the research time in the
same country.
Selection Criteria:
The IDRF program is committed to scholarship that advances knowledge
about non-U.S. cultures and societies and that is empirical and site
specific (involving many kinds of fieldwork and surveys, research in
archival or manuscript collections, or quantitative data collection).
The program promotes research that is at once located in a specific
discipline and geographical region and is engaged with interdisciplinary
and cross-regional perspectives. Proposals may cover all periods in
history, but must address topics that have relevance to contemporary
issues and debates.
The IDRF competition thus promotes a range of approaches and research
designs beyond single site or single country research, including
comparative work at the national and regional levels (that may in some
cases rely on secondary literature) and explicit comparison of cases
across time frames. The program is open to proposals informed by a range
of methodologies in the humanities and social sciences, both
quantitative and qualitative, that seek to answer research questions
through sustained empirical, site-specific and source-driven
investigations. The IDRF program will not support study at foreign
universities, conference participation, short research trips abroad or
projects relying primarily on labwork.
Applicants are expected to write in clear, intelligible prose for a
selection committee that is multi-disciplinary and cross-regional.
Proposals should display a thorough knowledge of the major concepts,
theories, and methods in the applicant's discipline and in other related
fields as well as a bibliography relevant to the research. Applicants
should specify why an extended period of on-site research is critical
for successful completion of the proposed doctoral dissertation. The
research design of proposals should be realistic in scope, clearly
formulated, and responsive to theoretical and methodological concerns.
Applicants should provide evidence of having attained an appropriate
level of training to undertake the proposed research, including evidence
of a degree of language fluency sufficient to complete the project.
Application Guidelines:
http://www.ssrc.org/programs/idrf/publications/IDRF_guidelines.pdf
Online Application Portal:
http://soap.ssrc.org/
List of 2006 Fellows:
http://www.ssrc.org/programs/idrf/Fellows/2006/index.page