Some Advice about Applying for Interdisciplinary Humanities Fellowships and Grants

The National Humanities Center (NHC) recently announced its fellows for the 2026-27 academic year, and two philosophers are among them. They are S.M. Love (Georgia State University) for the project, “Freedom from the Market: A Kantian Account of Socioeconomic Rights,” and James Van Cleve (University of Southern California) for the project, “Roderick Chisholm and Philosophy in America, 1950–2000.” There were 29 fellows in all. One might notice from looking at the whole list of them that 8 of the fellows are in history departments. Why just 2 philosophers but 8 historians? Why do philosophers seem underrepresented among interdisciplinary or general humanities fellowships and grants? The answer is that philosophers tend toward disciplinary insularity. This may be changing somewhat (see, for example, this) but I suspect it will remain an obstacle for a while. Rather than provide a definition of “disciplinary insularity”, what I offer below is some advice, based on my experiences working on interdisciplinary evaluation panels and my conversations with grant and fellowship administrators over the years, on how philosophers can try to overcome it or counter its effects when applying for humanities fellowships and grants (HFGs). Others are welcome to add their own advice in the comments. 1. Apply You cannot win if you do not play. Philosophers appear to apply for HFGs at a lower rate than scholars in other disciplines. If you look at the recent NHC fellows, it would be a mistake to infer from the fact that 4 times more historians than philosophers were selected that any given philosopher applicant is at a disadvantage, or that the organization is somehow biased against philosophers. I am reliably informed that many, many more historians tend to apply for these kinds of fellowships and grants than philosophers. 2. Explain Importance & Interestingness Sometimes, the importance and interestingness of a philosophical question or thesis or figure, while quite clear to people trained in philosophy, is not at all apparent to those not trained in philosophy, and for fellowships like these, the majority of your application’s evaluators, particularly at the final stages, will not be philosophers. So you need to make the case for the importance and interestingness of your project to non-philosophers. One thing to note about this.. The post Some Advice about Applying for Interdisciplinary Humanities Fellowships and Grants first appeared on Daily Nous.