Reader query on applying for dissertation fellowships

In the comments section of our newest "How can we help you?" post, a reader writes, "A post taking up applying for dissertation fellowships would be helpful or even some pointers to good fellowship lists."

Anyone with experience have any helpful tips?

Comments

[Amanda]

I've received some. Tips: Make sure your project closely matches the project of the fellowship and it helps if your recommenders know those sponsoring the project. Also these are great to get if you can. You have time to work on focused research, but you also meet outside professors who could be a great help with letters of recommendation on the job market.

[Michel X.]

My impression (n=1) is that most of these are departmental, and so the people to ask are one's supervisors and departmental administrators. Different application conditions attach to different fellowships (here, e.g., our dissertation fellowship makes explicit mention of departmental service), and you want to write a cover letter that highlights how you meet those conditions, and which makes the selection committee confident that you know what you need to do during the semester/year/whatever that's funded (and that you'll manage to do it). So be ready with a dissertation abstract, some extant dissertation work, and a relatively detailed plan of what still needs doing. The application might be fairly short, but you want to hit all those notes.

The only non-departmental fellowships of which I'm aware (note: I haven't really gone looking!) are from the ASA (http://aesthetics-online.org/?page=dissfellowships), SSHRC (for Canadian permanent residents), FRQSC (for Québeckers), and OGS (for Ontarians). I guess there's Fulbright too, for Americans?

Getting them is a much more involved process than the departmental one I described above, and everything that's been said about postdocs basically applies to those. I'd imagine that other extra-departmental fellowship processes are similarly involved.

[Amanda]

Michel there are a number of non-department dissertation fellowships. A lot of project grants (both in Europe and the US) hire dissertation fellows, Northwestern and Notre Dame I think have one every year. It is more common than you think.

[Tim]

If you qualify (and yes, some philosophers do) you can also go for an NSF. There are also NEH ones, aren't there? Provided the NEH still exists by the time you read this...