Society of Fellows in the Humanities | Humanities Institute

The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University has created a new and distinctive form of intellectual community with its Society of Fellows in the Humanities. The Society of Fellows will assemble a select group of PhD and MFA recipients to pursue a range of meaningful careers available to scholars in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences. In a fellowship year that combines research with hands-on experience, fellows will build on their doctoral training even as they explore new applications for their academic expertise.

This initiative has four major goals:

Provide recent graduates with an opportunity to expand their areas of interest and expertise.
Diversify the potential career paths of Krieger School graduates.
Give PhD candidates incentive to finish their degree in a timely manner.
Display the value of the humanities both within Johns Hopkins and outside of the university.

Krieger School students who complete their PhD in the humanities or related disciplines no more than 12 months before the start date are eligible for this award.

Applications for 2023–24 are now closed.

The Path Forward

Through an annual competition, the Society of Fellows will aim to award 12-month Postdoctoral Fellowships, which are renewable for one year. The first cohort (AY 2022-23) was announced in spring 2022. Each fellow will receive a salary of $55,000, plus a $1,500 research budget and health insurance.

This first cohort will include eight to nine fellows. The Krieger School aims to increase the cohort size to by three to four, providing postdoctoral fellowships to at least 12 candidates each year.

The KSAS Society of Fellows promises to be a transformative experience for the fellows and the organizations with whom they partner. It taps the truly dynamic potential of a graduate degree in the Humanities, offering a model for the future of graduate studies.
Virginia Jewiss, Associate Director, Alexander Grass Humanities Institute