Humanities External Fellowship Workshop

The Hall Center for the Humanities is announcing a new grant training initiative. 

The Humanities External Fellowship Workshop is a cohort-style training opportunity tailored to the specific demands of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). It aims to increase the number of applications from and awards to KU scholars.  

The NEH receives approximately 1000 fellowship applications per year and funds at 7%. The ACLS receives approximately 2000 fellowship applications each year; about 3% are successful. Taken together, the fellowships are among the most coveted and most competitive portable awards available to scholars in the humanities.  

In 2017, KU’s Office of Research started a cohort-style training tailored to the demands of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Local training with a cohort spread over the course of a year doubled the success rate of KU applicants. The Humanities External Fellowship Workshop makes the same kind of opportunity-specific support available to humanists.

Workshop Format

The workshop will meet every two weeks over the course of the 2026-2027 academic year, from early November through April. Meetings alternate between seminar-style training and workshop-style cohort experiences. We provide grant-writing expertise from around (and beyond) the university. Through iterative peer review, we also leverage the expertise of the assembled cohort.  

Participants in the cohort will:  

  • Receive training in the genre (and subgenres) of writing for the ACLS / NEH; 
  • Draft and revise applications on a common schedule; 
  • Get detailed and specific feedback on their applications from grant-writing veterans, staff at the Hall Center’s Research and Grant Development Office, and cohort colleagues. 
     

Eligibility

Applicants must meet the following criteria:  

  • Faculty of any rank at KU (tenured, tenure-track, teaching professors, full-time lecturers, etc.); 
  • Be eligible to apply for a fellowship from either the NEH or ACLS;  
  • Be available to meet on every other Friday afternoon, 1:00 to 3:00 pm, starting F 11/6 in the fall and F 1/29 in the spring. Some meetings will be virtual; some will be in person.  
     

Requirements

Be committed to participating in the entire workshop (i.e. all sessions), exchanging and providing feedback on multiple drafts with colleagues, and submitting an application to either the ACLS or NEH.

Application

Interested applicants should submit the following documents as a single PDF to the Research Grant Development Office at rgdo@ku.edu by 5:00 PM on Friday, October 23. 

Please use the filename:
“Fellowship-workshop-2026-LASTNAME-FIRSTNAME.pdf”  

  • A single cover page that includes:  
    • University appointment (dept., rank, etc.);  
    • Contact information; 
    • Which fellowship (ACLS, NEH, or both) for which you will submit an application;
    • A written commitment that, if accepted, you will participate in the entire seminar and submit at least one external fellowship application.  
  • 2-page CV 
  • 500-word research project summary (see review criteria below) 
     

Criteria and Selection Process:  

Cohort size is limited.  

Applications will be ranked according to the following criteria (adopted from the NEH Fellowship criteria):  

  • Intellectual significance of the project, including its value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both; 
  • Quality of the conception, definition, organization, and description of the project and the applicant’s clarity of expression; 
  • Quality or promise of the applicant as an interpreter of the humanities.  
     

Questions?

Reach out to Dave Tell (davetell@ku.edu), Research Faculty Fellow in the Hall Center.