Deadline: 1 December 2010
African Humanities Program
in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda
2010-2011
INSTRUCTIONS FOR APPLICANTS
Eligibility criteria
• The proposed project must be in the humanities.
• It must propose a written scholarly product such as a dissertation or a monograph.
• Research and writing under terms of the fellowship award must be undertaken in Africa. AHP fellowships may not be used for travel outside the continent.
• Dissertation applicants must be nationals of a country in sub-Saharan Africa, residing and working in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, or Uganda, pursuing a doctorate in one of those countries. They must have begun to write the dissertation before applying and must be able to complete the dissertation during the fellowship year. Applicants pursuing doctorates at a university in South Africa are not eligible.
• Postdoctoral applicants must be nationals of a country in sub-Saharan Africa, residing and working in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda. At the time of the submission, applicants must have defended the dissertation and must be no more than five years past the date of receiving the Ph.D. degree. Postdoctoral applicants may propose either a combination of research and writing, or writing only.
Fellowship awards
• The stipend for Dissertation-Completion Fellowships is $9,000.
• The stipend for Early Career Postdoctoral Fellowships is $16,000.
• The Residential Allowance is $5,000, and will be paid directly to the selected institute for advanced study hosting the AHP fellowship recipient. A list of residential sites currently available can be downloaded from the ACLS website at www.acls.org/programs/ahp or may be requested from ahp@acls.org . Residencies must be undertaken outside of the country in which the applicant maintains institutional affiliation and must last for a continuous period of not less than two months. No additional support in the form of residential allowance is available to support work at an applicant’s home institution.
Selection criteria
• The intrinsic interest and substantive merit of the work proposed
• The clarity of the intellectual agenda
• The record of achievement of postdoctoral scholars and the promise of Ph.D. candidates
• The contribution the work is likely to make to scholarship in the region and internationally
• The feasibility of the workplan
Preparing the application
All applicants should begin preparation early! Applications must be received by the African Humanities Program at the American Council of Learned Societies in New York no later than December 1, 2010 .
All applications must be typed (no handwriting, please). ACLS encourages the submission of applications via email in either Word (.doc or .docx files) or Acrobat (.pdf files). ACLS cannot application materials submitted in other file formats. Application forms may be downloaded in either Word or Acrobat. Application forms downloaded in Word may be typed on a computer, saved in a Word or Acrobat file and submitted via email attachment to ahp@acls.org . Applicants are asked to observe specifications for font and line-spacing and to maintain the page and space limits represented in the original application form. All applications must be signed and dated, or will be considered incomplete. Applications sent electronically must be named using the following file name format: Surname, Given Name(s).doc/docx/pdf.
Application forms downloaded in Acrobat or received via Air Mail may be printed, then typed on a typewriter and returned to ACLS via Air Mail or courier service. Applicants are asked to send their materials via Air Mail or courier service only if they are unable to do so via email; it is not necessary to send applications both electronically and on paper.
Application Elements
An application form consists of the following numbered elements, which should be submitted in the order specified here and on the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
I. Applicant information – cover sheet
II. Personal history: education, research, teaching, and service (as applicable )
III. List of applicant’s publications [Maximum one page, 11 pt. type]
IV. Intellectual autobiography [Maximum one page, single spaced, 11 pt. type]
A description of the applicant’s academic career, detailing the ideas and experiences that have shaped and motivated the applicant’s intellectual work and plans for the future. The autobiography should conclude with a separate paragraph answering the question: “What do I see myself doing five years from now?”
V. Application essay [Maximum two pages, single spaced, 11 pt. type]
1. Main Thesis: The main argument or problematic guiding the proposed research and
writing.
2. Body: The research problem in more detail and a justification of the research focus and approach. What is already known about the problem and what more needs to be known?
3. Literature and sources: The proposed topic placed in the context of existing literature and as well as potential new sources. What will be the criteria for determining which sources are relevant? How will the project extend, modify, or challenge existing scholarship?
4. Methods: A detailed description of the methods to be used. How will they be deployed to address the main thesis or argument of the project?
5. Significance: An explanation of the importance of the proposed work to central issues in the discipline, to the African humanities, and to humanities scholarship in general.
6. Workplan: The concluding section of the essay, specifying a plan of work with a timeline for the research and/or writing during the fellowship period . How much has the applicant already accomplished on the project and how much remains to be done? What steps are anticipated during the fellowship period? What is the expected result? The workplan must specify the desired start and end dates for the fellowship period, ensuring that they fall within the period of the fellowship and form a period of work no less than 10 months in duration.
Letters of recommendation should arrive with applications at ACLS by the deadline, December 1, 2010. Applicants should send the forms to recommenders early, so that there is enough time to complete them. While applicants are responsible for making sure that the completed application has two appropriate recommendations, they must not delay sending all other parts of the application by the deadline, regardless of whether recommenders have sent their materials or not.
(Late letters of recommendation should be forwarded by the applicant to ACLS as soon as possible, in no case more than one month past the deadline.)
Submitting the application
Applicants are asked to follow these instructions carefully. Failure to do so may render an application late, incomplete, or otherwise ineligible for inclusion in the fellowship competition.
1. Applications may be submitted electronically (via email attachment) or on paper (via Air Mail or courier service) to the AHP/ACLS office in New York.
2. ACLS can accept only files sent in Word (.doc or .docx) or Acrobat (.pdf) formats. No other file formats are acceptable. Electronic submission is encouraged, with letters of recommendation and the applicant’s signature scanned as .pdf files. Electronic applications must be saved using a file name in the following format: Surname, Given Name(s).doc/docx/pdf.
3. Applications submitted electronically should be sent to ahp@acls.org, with all application materials included as attachments to one single email. If the files are too large to send in one email, applicants must create a series of smaller numbered files following the same file name format and send them in separate emails, making sure to note the total number of files transmitted.
The subject line of the email should include the applicant’s surname and the phrase “AHP application.” The body of the email should indicate the number of files attached. Application materials should be submitted only once, unless ACLS requests that and applicant resubmit. “Updated” or “revised” versions of the application will not be accepted once an application has been submitted.
4. Applications sent by Air Mail or courier service should be addressed to:
African Humanities Program
American Council of Learned Societies
633 Third Avenue, 8th floor
New York, NY 10017-6795, USA
5. IMPORTANT: Whether an application is submitted electronically or on paper, all applicants must send a separate email to ahp@acls.org requesting confirmation that the application file has been received and can be opened. Those who do not receive a reply within ten days confirming receipt should resend the confirmation request. Applicants should not resubmit application materials unless requested to do so.