Graduate Fellows Summer Research Institute in U.S. Law and Race
June 9-27, 2025
Call for Applicants: Deadline February 1, 2025
Funded by the Mellon Foundation, this three-week residential fellowship program supports four (4) graduate students in Summer 2025 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's U.S. Law and Race Initiative with the Digital Legal Research Lab. We seek proposals addressing race and racialization in U.S. law and history broadly, aiming to understand racialized people's use of the law to advance personhood, citizenship, rights, and sovereignty throughout American history.
The Fellowship: Fellows will workshop their research and writing, receive training in digital methods to support data structuring and analysis, contribute to an Open Educational Resource, and enjoy seminar-style discussion of shared readings. The 3-week program features tailored mentoring with U.S. Law & Race affiliate faculty and staff, along with opportunities to meet and network with UNL's History & Digital Humanities communities. Faculty mentors include William G. Thomas III (History), Katrina Jagodinsky (History and Women’s and Gender Studies), Jeannette Eileen Jones (History and Ethnic Studies), Donna Doan Anderson (History), Genesis Agosto (Law), Eric Berger (Law), Danielle Jefferis (Law), Laura Muñoz (History and Ethnic Studies), Jessica Shoemaker (Law), and Catherine Wilson (Law).
Benefits: $4,000 stipend; all housing and meals provided; and all travel costs are covered.
Eligibility: We seek Graduate Fellows researching topics broadly related to U.S. law and race. We are not able to accept proposals that are solely quantitative social science research. Fellows must be from Ph.D. programs in History or relevant humanities or humanistic social science disciplines, including joint J.D./Ph.D. programs. We are especially interested in applications from scholars who identify with traditionally underrepresented groups or attend Minority Serving Institutions.
How to Apply: To be considered for the Fellowship, you should send 1.) a letter of interest describing your research project, the writing you propose to workshop and how you would contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Initiative, 2.) a CV, and 3.) a list of two references the committee may contact. Please send materials to uslawandrace@unl.edu with the subject line "Mellon Graduate Fellows". For questions contact William G. Thomas III (wthomas4@unl.edu). For more on the fellowship program go to: https://uslawandrace.unl.edu/mellon-graduate-fellows/.