The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), with financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, announces competitions for:

• Dissertation-completion fellowships in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda
• Early-career postdoctoral fellowships in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa

Eligible Applicants

• Eligible Applicants Dissertation applicants must be doctoral candidates in the final year of writing the dissertation.(No dissertation fellowships are available in South Africa.)

• Postdoctoral candidates must be scholars who have obtained the Ph.D. within the past eight years.

• All applicants must be citizens of a sub-Saharan African country residing and working in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda.

Eligible Projects

• Proposed projects must be in the humanities, defined by the study of history, language, and culture, and by qualitative approaches in research.

• The list of humanities disciplines includes anthropology, archaeology, studies of the fine and performing arts, history, linguistics, literature studies, studies of religion, and philosophy.

• Projects in social sciences such as economics, sociology, or political science, as well as in law or international relations, are not eligible unless they are clearly humanistic in content and focus.

Selection Criteria

• The intrinsic interest and substantive merit of the work proposed
• The clarity of the intellectual agenda
•  The feasibility of the work plan
• The record of achievement of a postdoctoral scholar and the promise of a Ph.D. candidate
• The contribution the work is likely to make to scholarship on the continent and worldwide

The African Humanities Program seeks to strengthen humanities scholarship in Africa

• By promoting diversity in terms of gender and historical disadvantage, along with diversity in disciplines, institutions, and regions. Women are especially encouraged to apply.
• By making research opportunities available to staff at African universities.

Application Deadline: 1 November 2012
Application forms and instructions for the 2012–2013 competition are available at  The African Humanities Program Website or may be requested by email at [email protected]