Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship: InterAsian Contexts and Connections

OPEN FOR APPLICATIONS, NEXT DEADLINE IS SEPTEMBER 19^TH 2016. APPLY NOW

Overview

We are pleased to announce the details of our expanded and enhanced 2016–2017 InterAsia Program Transregional Research Fellowships program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and will be accepting applications until September 19, 2016.

Since 2012, the SSRC has offered a Transregional Research Fellowship program aimed at supporting and promoting excellence in transregional research under the rubric InterAsian Contexts and Connections. These fellowships serve to strengthen the understanding of issues and geographies that do not fit neatly into existing divisions of academia or the world and to develop new approaches, practices, and opportunities in international, regional, and area studies. In addition, the fellowships establish structures for linking scholars across disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Since its inception, the intellectual thrust of the program has been the reconceptualization of Asia as an interlinked historical and geographic formation stretching from West Asia through Eurasia, Central Asia, and South Asia to Southeast Asia and East Asia. Research proposals supported by the fellowships examine processes that connect places and peoples (such as migration, media, and resource flows) as well as those that reconfigure local and translocal contexts (such as shifting borders, urbanization, and social movements). 

This year, we are pleased to offer two separate fellowships opportunities, and are encouraging applications that engage with a number of Invitational Priorities, including those that explore linkages beyond the InterAsian expanse and that emphasize connections between Asia and Africa (see Answers to FAQs for detailed descriptions of this year’s Invitational Priorities). 

The first, the Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship: InterAsian Contexts and Connections, builds upon the SSRC’s current transregional grants program through which more than 50 individual fellowships totaling nearly $2 million have been awarded (please see detailed descriptions of our fellows’ research projects here: 2012–2013, 2013–2014, and 2015–2016). These fellowships support junior scholars (one to five years out of the PhD) as they complete first books or undertake second projects. In addition to funding research, the fellowships create networks and shared resources that will support fellows well beyond the award period, providing promising scholars important support at critical junctures in their careers. In 2016, approximately twenty awards of up to $45,000 each will be awarded to scholars located in any world region. Award funds are to be disbursed flexibly over the period April 1, 2017–August 1, 2018. 

The second, the SSRC Global Summer Semester Residency at the University of Göttingen, is a short-term fellowship opportunity offered in collaboration with the CETREN Transregional Research Network at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Support will be provided to a small cohort of researchers who are working on projects that reflect the existing research expertise at the University, and that build upon CETREN’s research themes: Movements of Knowledge, Media, Migration and the Moving Political, and Religious Networks. Recipients will be based in residence at the University of Göttingen for the 2017 summer semester (April 15, 2017–July 15, 2017).