Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellowship
Please see the full solicitation for complete information about the funding opportunity. Below is a summary assembled by the Research & Innovation Office (RIO).Please note Mellon’s new evaluation criteria.
Program Summary
One of the core aims of Mellon’s program is to elevate the knowledge that informs fuller narratives of the human experience. Supporting the expansion and evolution of humanities disciplines through investing in the range and productivity of exceptional faculty is crucial to this objective. New Directions Fellows undertake systematic training outside their fields of specialization to acquire the competencies required for advanced cross-disciplinary research—research that goes beyond traditional boundaries and offers innovative and effective ways of bringing humanistic knowledge to bear on societal challenges.
Serious interdisciplinary research often requires established scholars to pursue formal, substantive, and methodological training in addition to the PhD and outside their areas of formal expertise. The New Directions program is intended to enable scholars-teachers to work on problems that interest them most, at an appropriately advanced level of sophistication. In addition to facilitating the work of individual faculty members, these awards should benefit scholarship in the humanities more generally.
The proposed field of study must be a foray into a new area of intellectual inquiry and not just an enhancement to go further in the primary field. Language study, technical training, or skills acquisition such as GIS mapping do not, by themselves, constitute a new direction.
Deadlines
- 鶹ѰInternal Deadline: 11:59pm MT November 10, 2025
- Sponsor Application Deadline: 1:00pm MT December 11, 2025
Internal Application Requirements (all in PDF format)
- Project Summary (200 words; maximum 1,300 characters with spaces): Please provide an explanation of the research's overall significance and how the new direction assists the field’s development.
- Recommendation Letter(s):For the internal competition, the letter should be from the candidate’s department chair or other senior colleague and should address the candidate’s preparation and the relationship of the “new direction” to the nominee’s research and pedagogy. An additional letter of recommendation may be submitted from a colleague in the new field, if appropriate.
- PI Curriculum Vitae (5 pages maximum)
- Budget Overview (1 page maximum): A basic budget outlining project costs is sufficient; detailed OCG budgets are not required. Final fellow budgets commonly range from $175,000 to $250,000; the maximum is $300,000 over three years.
To access the online application, visit:
Eligibility
Humanities and humanistic social sciences faculty who have received their doctorates between 2013 and 2019 are eligible.
Limited Submission Guidelines
Only one nomination from 鶹ѰBoulder is allowed.
Award Information
Final budgets commonly range from $175,000 to $250,000; the maximum is $300,000 over three years.
Fellows will receive the: 1) equivalent of one academic year’s salary, 2) two summers of additional support, each at the equivalent of two-ninths of the previous academic year salary, and 3) tuition, course fees, or equivalent direct costs associated with the fellow’s training program. The Foundation also expects the fellow’s home institution to use budgetary relief resulting from the award for academic purposes, preferably in the fellow’s department. To the extent possible, we recommend aligning the nominee’s departmental leave to enhance the impact of the award.
Review Criteria
The internal committee will review internal applications following the Mellon Foundation’s criteria:
- Originality of the idea, overall significance of the research, and appropriateness of the proposed training program
- The case for the importance of extra-disciplinary training
- Likely ability of the candidate to derive satisfactory results from the training program proposed within a reasonable time frame
- Potential for long-term impact on the candidates new or proposed field of study, beyond just the individual’s research
- Record of the nominee, including their history of effectively advancing public-facing and/or community-engaged work
For nominees whose retraining would be a departure from the humanities, their application materials will also be evaluated on whether the proposed interdisciplinary approach would reflect an enduring humanities perspective.