Fellowships and Other Awards
Since 1923, the SSRC has funded the research of over ten thousand fellows. Most SSRC fellowships are conducted through annual, peer-reviewed competitions and offer support for predissertation, dissertation, and postdoctoral work. And, although most SSRC fellowships target the social sciences, a number also engage the humanities, the natural sciences, and relevant professional and practitioner communities.
With funding from the Mellon Foundation and the Japan Foundation's Center for Global Partnership, the SSRC currently offers five major fellowships:
- International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) — promotes international research that engages interdisciplinary and crossregional perspectives.
- Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) — fosters transition from graduate student to professional researcher.
- Mellon Mays Fellowship — supports graduate students and young faculty at critical stages in their early careers.
- Abe Fellowship — supports contemporary, policy relevant, comparative research and network building among Japan- and America-based researchers and practitioners.
- Abe Fellowship for Journalists — supports in-depth reporting on topics of pressing concern to the United States and Japan.
Fellowship topics are wide ranging and ever evolving. Recent examples include:
- Environmental nationalism in new Europe
- Mannahatta and Manhattan: Conceiving the sustainable city of 2409
- Print culture and painting in Victorian London
- Inequality, democracy and redistribution in Latin America
- Transnational workers, local residents and oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta
- After SARS: An ethnography of public health campaigns in South China
- Japanese colonial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945
- Changing sources of stability in the Japan-U.S. alliance
The Council occasionally offers small grants to institutions undertaking work in an area of intellectual interest. Two recent examples are: 1) grants for academic-advocacy collaboration in the media and communications field; and 2) grants for work by National Resource Centers to deepen public understanding of Islam. Recipients of the latter include Indiana University's Center for the Study of Global Change and its "Voices and Visions" Project.
The SSRC established the Albert O. Hirschman Prize in 2007 to recognize academic excellence in international, interdisciplinary social science research, theory, and public communication in the tradition of German-born American economist Albert Hirschman. The first two Hirschman Prize recipients are Dani Rodrik (2007) and Charles Tilly (2008). The latter received the prize just weeks before his death.
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