Wenner-Gren Foundation Wadsworth African Fellowship 2025 (up to $20,000)

Deadline: December 15, 2024

Applications are open for the Wadsworth African Fellowship 2025. The Wadsworth African Fellowships provide funding for African students pursuing a PhD or equivalent doctoral degree at South African universities where they can receive international-level training in anthropology, including archaeology and biological anthropology.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation is committed to playing a leadership role in anthropology. They help anthropologists advance anthropological knowledge, build sustainable careers, and amplify the impact of anthropology within the wider world. They dedicate ourselves to broadening the conversation in anthropology to reflect the full diversity of the field.

Benefits

• The $20,000 annual fellowship can be used toward travel, living expenses, tuition, income taxes, student fees, insurance, books, research costs, and any other relevant expenditures incurred in the course of the doctoral program.
• Fellows may renew the award for up to two additional years upon successful completion of each preceding year of training. They can apply separately for an additional year of support for dissertation write-up. Wenner-Gren awards do not include funds to cover institutional overhead or any fees related to the administration of the grants and fellowships.

Eligibility

• Open to African scholars who may not otherwise be able to pursue a doctoral degree in anthropology. They must be citizens and residents of an African country at the time of application. They must also be members of an underrepresented group in academic anthropology and archaeology.
• At the time they apply for the fellowship, candidates must have an application for doctoral admission pending at a South African university. Applicants may have already begun their doctoral studies at their chosen institution, but they must demonstrate why their circumstances have changed and why they no longer have sufficient funding to complete their degree. Students who have advanced beyond their first year of doctoral training are not eligible to apply.
• Applicants must be prepared to explain their reasons for choosing their host institution (the university where they plan to study). To date, Fellows have studied at the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town. The applicant must also have a host sponsor, or supervisor, who is a member of the South African university where the candidate plans to pursue training. The host sponsor, who must be willing to assume responsibility for overseeing the candidate’s training, cannot sponsor more than one active Wadsworth African Fellow per funding season.
• The applicant must also have a home sponsor who is a member of the institution at which the applicant received a prior degree. In some cases, the host institution will be the same institution where the applicant studied previously. If this situation applies, the applicant should ask someone other than the host sponsor to serve as the home sponsor. This might be the head of a relevant department or another member of the academic staff who can write or speak on the applicant’s behalf.
• Applicants may submit only one application per funding season. They may not apply through two or more departments or host institutions at the same time. If the Foundation receives more than one application from a single South African department, the Foundation will contact that department to have them prioritize their applicants for potential funding.
• Applicants should show that they have sufficient funds in addition to the Wadsworth African Fellowship to complete their training at the host institution. Applicants exclusively seeking fieldwork or dissertation write-up support are not eligible to apply. Fellows are encouraged to seek outside funding to support dissertation research. Although Wadsworth Fellows are eligible to apply for the Foundation’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, funding is not guaranteed. After completing their dissertation research, Wadsworth Fellows are also eligible to apply for dissertation write-up support.
• Unless they officially withdraw from the program—or fail to comply with the conditions of the award—Fellows are considered active until they have completed their thesis and are awarded a degree.

Application

The application asks for the following:

• General information about you, the home institution and sponsor, and the host institution and sponsor
• Answers to three questions about your background and your proposed plan of study, your research interests, and your professional goals or plans
• A detailed budget
• Copies of official transcripts from your home institution; please provide a translation if they are not in English
• Where applicable, evidence of your fluency in the language of the institution at which you will be pursuing training
• Curricula vitae for the applicant and host sponsor.
• In addition to your application, you will need to request letters of support from both the home sponsor and the host sponsor, to be sent directly to sent directly to [email protected] by the application deadline. Share these guidelines with your home sponsor and host sponsor so they include the information they need.

Click here to apply

For more information, visit Wadsworth African Fellowship.