Funding Opportunity for

Individuals

Fellowships

Maximum award amount

$60,000 ($5,000 per month)

Expected Output

Book; Critical Edition; Digital Resource or Publication; Other Scholarly Resource; Peer-reviewed Article; Translation with annotations or critical apparatus

Period of performance

Six to twelve months

NEH Fellowships are competitive awards granted to individual scholars pursuing projects that embody exceptional research, rigorous analysis, and clear writing. Applications must clearly articulate a project’s value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both.

Fellowships provide recipients time to conduct research or to produce books, monographs, peer-reviewed articles, e-books, born-digital materials, translations with annotations or a critical apparatus, or critical editions resulting from previous research. Projects may be at any stage of development.

NEH invites research applications from scholars in all disciplines, and it encourages submissions from independent scholars and junior scholars.

What Is New

  • The Fellowships for Digital Publication program has been integrated into the regular Fellowships program. Born-digital projects and resources are welcome to apply. Please see the Notice of Funding Opportunity for details.
  • NEH has moved to a shared payment service operated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and can no longer deposit funds for awards to individuals into an institutional bank account. Starting with awards issued August 2024, NEH will make payment to a personal bank account only.

Note about Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence

This grant program is one of ten NEH programs that are part of NEH’s Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence initiative, which is encouraging research on the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI. To learn more about the initiative, please see our page about the AI initiative.

2024 NEH Fellowships Webinar

A free online information session will be held on February 12, 2025, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. A recording will be provided. The webinar introduces the program, describes the application process and eligibility criteria, and offers application writing suggestions. It consists of a 45-minute presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. Close captions are provided. 

Registration link here

Applicants to NEH for awards with expected issuance dates on or after October 1, 2024, should be aware of revisions to the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (2 CFR Part 200) effective from that date. All NEH awards issued on or after October 1, 2024, will be subject to the revised regulations. Exemption Note: While awards to individuals do not include budgets, indirect costs, or single audits, broader revisions to 2 CFR 200 may be applicable. 

Additional information is available at https://www.neh.gov/grants/manage/2024-Revisions-to-2-CFR-200

Examples of Projects Funded by this Grant Program

View All Projects

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Application Instructions

Review your application package

Read the notice of funding opportunity to ensure you understand all the expectations and restrictions for projects delivered under this program and are prepared to write the most effective application.

Application Materials

Notice of Funding Opportunity, 2025 (PDF)

Grants.gov application package

Program Resources

Frequently Asked Questions, 2025 (PDF)

List of recent projects

Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence for NEH Grant Proposals

Sample Applications

British Studies: Mary Anne Rawson’s The Bow in the Cloud (1834): A Digital Edition and a Network Analysis of Anti-Slavery Literature (Digital Project)

Music and Dance Studies: Analyzing the Connections Between Choreography and Music in Ballets by George Balanchine (Digital Project)

Register for an account on Grants.gov

When you are ready to apply, register for a Grants.gov account. If you already have registered, make sure the account is current. After registering, you must add an “individual applicant” profile. Click on the “My Account” link, then on “Manage Profiles” and “Add Profile.” Refer to Grants.gov’s instructions for adding a profile.

Complete your application package

Follow the instructions outlined in the Notice of Funding Opportunity and Grants.gov.

Submit your application package on Grants.gov

You will receive a confirmation from Grants.gov when you’ve successfully submitted your application. Subsequently, you will receive up to five more notices confirming different stages in the application process. Verify that you have received all confirmations. Note that email filters may send these messages to your spam or junk folder.

Monitor the status of the submission of your letters of recommendation

NEH will request letters of reference from your recommenders approximately seven to ten days after the application deadline. You will be notified by email when each of your letters of reference has been received. Once you receive final confirmation of receipt from Grants.gov, you may check the status of your letters by logging in to the secure area of NEH’s website. Enter your NEH application number and your Grants.gov tracking number. You will be able to see the names and e-mail addresses of your letter writers and whether their letters have arrived. If necessary, you may send reminders to your letter writers (including the upload link) from this site. You are responsible for ensuring that your letter writers have received the solicitations from NEH and submitted their letters.

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Updates for Applicants

Sample Application Narratives

The narrative samples below are not intended to serve as models, but to give applicants a sense of how a successful application might be crafted. Note that the format might have been changed since these applications were submitted. Follow the guidelines in the currently posted Notice of Funding Opportunity to ensure that your application is complete and eligible.

African Studies and Anthropology, Children of the Soil: The Politics of Built Forms, Labor, and Anticipatory Landscapes in Urban Madagascar

American Literature, Poetry and Community in Auden and Others

American Studies, A Cultural History of the 1950s Calypso Craze in the United States

Architecture, Materialized: The Global Life of Steel

Asian Studies, A Chinese Man-of-Letters in an Age of Industrial Capitalism: Chen Diexian (1879-1940)

Asian Studies (Translation Project), An Edition and Translation of Tarikh-i Hamidi, a 19th-Century Uyghur History of Eurasia

British Literature, Paper Art and Craft: Victorian Writers and Their Materials

Classics, Ovid’s Homer: Tradition, Authority, and Epic Reception

Comparative Literature, Moroccan Literature and the Memory of Medieval Muslim Iberia

Comparative Literature, The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature

European History, Emigration from Eastern Europe to the United States, 1889-1989

German Studies (includes new work plan format), Disinformation and the Illustrierter Beobachter, 1926–1945

History of Science, Inside-Out Earth: Residual Governance Under Extreme Conditions

Italian Literature (Translation Project), 'The First Novel Specially Written for Women'- Jacopo Caviceo's Peregrino (1508)

Latin American Studies, The Creole Circus and the Theater in Argentina and Uruguay, 1860-1910

Latin American Studies, Reading Programs, Cultural Engagement, and Civic Participation in Latin America

Legal History (includes new work plan format), Ordering Property- A Global History of Maritime Prize Law, 1498-1916

Media Studies, A Cultural History of American Color Television

Medieval Studies, Secrecy and Divinity in Early English Literature

Middle Eastern Studies, The Formation of Islamic Civilization, 1040-1194

Music History and Criticism, The Comedians of the King

Political Science, Tocqueville on Religion and Democracy

Religious Studies, Temples of Humanity: A Religious History of American Secularism

Russian History, Europe's Russian Colonies: Tsarist Subjects Abroad and the Quest for Freedom in the 19th Century

U.S. History, African Americans who Returned to the United States from Canada after the Civil War

U.S. History, Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country

U.S. History (work plan only), Old Age in the Wake of the American Revolution

U.S. History, Race, Liberty, and Policing before the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

U.S. History, The Mutiny on the Hermione and American Political Culture

U.S. History, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana