Resources & Links

Grants and Scholarships

Grants and Fellowships

University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign plus 14 other research universities, Humanities Without Walls Consortium, Alternative Academic Career Summer Workshops for Pre-doctoral Students in the Humanities (Chicago, July-August). "This project aims to help prepare doctoral students for careers both within and outside the academy through a series of summer workshops. Graduate students selected for this program will engage in intensive discussions with organizers of public humanities projects, leaders of university presses and learned societies, experts in the various domains of the digital humanities, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and holders of important non-faculty positions in colleges and universities."

American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellows program, 2-year staff position placements for recent PhDs in the humanities. “This program, made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aims to expand the reach of doctoral education in the U.S. by demonstrating that the capacities developed in the advanced study of the humanities have wide application, both within and beyond the academy.”

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, Museum of the City of New York (PDF).

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Articles, Advice, and Resources

Alt-Ac Programs at Other Universities

University of Michigan, The Humanities PhD Project. "The Humanities PhD Project supports doctoral students and faculty in the humanities as they imagine, plan for, and pursue multiple career paths as humanists in the world, in the academy and beyond. Funded by the Andrew S. Mellon Foundation and the Rackham Graduate School, this project broadens the career paths of humanities doctoral students and considers new ways doctoral programs can support these efforts."

University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign plus 14 other research universities, Humanities Without Walls Consortium, Alternative Academic Career Summer Workshops for Pre-doctoral Students in the Humanities (Chicago, July-August). "This project aims to help prepare doctoral students for careers both within and outside the academy through a series of summer workshops. Graduate students selected for this program will engage in intensive discussions with organizers of public humanities projects, leaders of university presses and learned societies, experts in the various domains of the digital humanities, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and holders of important non-faculty positions in colleges and universities."

University of British Columbia, English Department PhD Co-op Program. “Allows PhD students to widen their range of professional skills through paid work experience in fields such as academic administration, communications, project management, and archival, government, and NGO research.”

University of California Humanities Research Institute, Humanists@Work. “Humanists@Work is a UC-wide initiative geared towards UC Humanities and humanistic Social Science MAs and PhDs interested in careers outside/alongside the academy.”

Penn State University, Graduate Internship Program (GRIP). “Recognizing that graduate students in the humanities and social sciences have highly sought-after writing, communication, and quantitative skills that can enrich the operations of units across the university, the Liberal Arts Graduate Internship Program (GRIP) is designed to connect graduate students in the liberal arts with those university units that can most benefit from their expertise.”

American Historical Association-Mellon Foundation Career Diversity Pilot Programs: 1. University of Chicago. 2. University of New Mexico. 3. UCLA. 4. Columbia University. (For more on this initiative, see Scott Jaschik, “A Broader History Ph.D.,” Inside Higher Ed, March 2014, and the AHA site, Career Diversity for Historians.)

University of California Davis Humanities Institute, PhD Unlimited project. “PhD Unlimited is a series of speakers, workshops, and other events focused on the growing need for career training for PhDs that goes beyond the expectation of tenure-track academia.”

Reports and Conferences

  • Where Are They Now?Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 18, 2015. “Through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the MLA used publicly available information to determine the employment status in 2013-14 for 2,214 people who earned Ph.D.s from 1996-2011 … About 11 percent of the MLA sample is self-employed, and about 8 percent work in business, government or nonprofit work. Some 3 percent work in K-12 education and about 8 percent work in academe as staff or administrators.”

  • Report of the Scholarly Communication Institute on career preparation in humanities graduate programs, including recommendation by report author Katina Rogers (U of Virginia), 2013. Text of report is here (PDF: “Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track”).

  • Future Humanities: Transforming Graduate Studies for the Future of Canada, May 21-22, 2015, McGill University.

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