Here is a list of fellowships, grants, visiting scholars’ programs, and award opportunities for scholars working on South Asian studies, legal history, and socio-legal studies.
- Grants and fellowships:
The organizations below offer relevant grants and fellowships. Be sure to read the eligibility requirements carefully, as some of these are aimed at scholars based in the US, Canada, India, or South Asia specifically. (I don’t have additional information on these, so please send your questions to the sponsoring body, not to me.)
Sponsoring organizations:
- American Council of Learned Societies
- American Institute for Bangladesh Studies
- American Institute for Indian Studies
- American Institute for Pakistan Studies
- American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies
- Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program
- Baldy Center Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, University at Buffalo (Buffalo, New York)
- Fung Global Fellows Program (Princeton)
- Global Academic Fellows program, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law (Hong Kong)
- Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Law and Civilization (Yale)
- Käte Hamburger Kolleg Center for Advanced Study, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Münster, Germany) [includes virtual fellowships; contact info.evir@uni-muenster.de]
- Shelby Cullom Davis Center (Princeton)
- Harvard Law School’s Islamic Legal Studies Program
- Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany) [includes the German Chancellor Fellowship for citizens of Brazil, China, India, Russia, South Africa, and the USA; PhD not required]
- Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Shimla)
- Institute for Advanced Study, Durham University (UK)
- Institute for Advanced Study: School of Historical Studies (Princeton, NJ)
- Institute for Advanced Study: School of Social Science (Princeton, NJ)
- Institute for Research in the Humanities (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
- Law and Public Affairs Program (Princeton)
- Leon Levy Center for Biography (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- National Endowment for the Humanities
- National Humanities Center (Research Triangle, NC)
- National Science Foundation: Law & Social Sciences
- Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Amsterdam)
- New India Foundation Fellowships (India)
- Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (Harvard)
- Science History Institute (Philadelphia)
- Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute
- Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing: Law and Society fellowship (US)
- Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada)
- Social Science Research Council (New York)
- Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
- Stanford Humanities Center
- Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (Uppsala)
- University of Texas at Austin Institute for Historical Studies
- Wenner-Gren Foundation
- Wilson Center (Washington, DC)
- Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Germany)
2. Visiting Scholars’ programs:
Visiting scholars’ programs often host fewer academics at one time than fellowship programs (above). They may offer less funding, too.
- Berkeley Law Visiting Scholars Program (Berkeley, California)
- Maurer School of Law’s Law and Society Scholars-in-Residence Program, Indiana University Bloomington
- University of Washington’s South Asia Center Visiting Scholars Program (Seattle, Washington): *eligible applicants must be based in South Asia*
3. Support for threatened and displaced scholars:
- Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF): “the only global program that arranges and funds fellowships for threatened and displaced scholars at partnering higher education institutions worldwide”
- Scholars at Risk Network (including remote fellowships)
4. Awards:
Most of the book, article, and student awards listed here are on an annual cycle. Many welcome self-nominations.
a. Book prizes:
Most book awards aim to recognize scholarly monographs, and are not open to edited volumes, books of essays, textbooks, or critical editions. Although some awards are on a two- or three-year cycle, most competitions are annual and are only open to books published during the calendar year before the competition year. As a result, these deadlines are easy to miss.
- ACLS Open Access Book Prizes: History or multi-media born-digital Humanities books
- Am. Historical Association Book Prize–Richards Prize: South Asian history
- Am. Historical Association Book Prize–Morris D. Forkosch Prize: British, British imperial or British Commonwealth history since 1485, especially “relating to the shared common law heritage of the English-speaking world”
- Am. Institute of Indian Studies Book Prize–Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities: for best unpublished book manuscript on an Indian subject (humanities)
- Am. Institute of Indian Studies Book Prize–Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences: for best unpublished book manuscript on an Indian subject (social sciences)
- American Institute of Pakistan Studies Book Prize: Pakistan studies
- Asian Law and Society Association Distinguished Book Award: for books on law and society re Asia published in the previous calendar year
- Am. Society for Legal History–Peter Gonville Stein Award: non-US legal history
- Assoc. for Asian Studies Book Prize–Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize: for best English-language work in South Asian studies
- Assoc. for Asian Studies Book Prize–Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize: first single-authored monograph on South Asia
- Assoc. for Asian Studies Book Prize–A. K. Ramanujan Book Prize: for translations from South Asian languages into English
- Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize: any field of history, written “by an individual who identifies as a woman and is normally resident in North America”
- Inner Temple Book Prize: recognizes “outstanding contributions to the understanding of law”; 3-year cycle
- Law and Society Association Prize–J. Willard Hurst Prize: socio-legal history
- New India Foundation Book Prize: “for the best non-fiction book on modern/contemporary India published in the previous year”
- Socio-Legal Studies Association (UK)–Hart Socio-Legal Studies Association Book Prize: socio-legal studies
- Socio-Legal Studies Association (UK)–Socio-Legal Theory and History Prize: socio-legal theory or socio-legal history
b. Article prizes:
- Am. Society for Legal History–Jane Burbank Global Legal History Article Prize: for best article in regional, global, imperial, comparative, or transnational legal history
- Am. Society for Legal History—Anne Fleming Article Prize: for best article on the relation of law and business/economy in any region or historical period, published in the previous two years in Law and History Review or Enterprise and Society; awarded every other year
- Am. Society for Legal History–Surrency Prize: for best article published in the ASLH’s journal, Law and History Review, in the previous year
- Am. Society for Legal History—Sutherland Prize: for best article on the legal history of Britain and/or the British Empire published in the previous year
- Asian Law and Society Association Distinguished Article Award: for a “scholarly article judged to have made an important contribution in the field of Asian law and society”
- Law and Society Association–LSA Article Prize: recognizes “exceptional scholarship in socio-legal studies for a journal article or chapter in an edited book”; 2-year cycle
- Law and Society Association–John Hope Franklin Prize: recognizes “exceptional scholarship in the field of race, racism, and law”
c. Digital legal history prizes:
- Am. Society for Legal History: Mary L. Dudziak Digital Legal History Prize: for an outstanding digital legal history project. “These projects may take the form of either traditionally published peer reviewed scholarship or born-digital projects of equivalent depth and scope”
d. Doctoral dissertation prizes:
- The Bayly Prize: for “a distinguished thesis in an Asian subject falling within the scope of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society or of Modern Asian Studies“; must be for a PhD degree at a British university
- Law and Society Association–Student Dissertation Prize: for “outstanding work in law and society research”
- UCLA Center for India and South Asia–Sardar Patel Award: for “best doctoral dissertation on any aspect of modern India–social sciences, humanities, education and fine arts–in any US university or academic institution awarding the Ph.D”
e. Student prizes:
- Asian Law and Society Association Graduate Student Article Award
- Law and Society Association–Graduate Student Paper Prize: for “outstanding law and society research,” including historical scholarship; 2-year cycle
- Law and Society Association–Undergraduate Student Paper Prize: for “the undergraduate student paper that best represents outstanding law and society research”; 2-year cycle
(version updated on 6 August 2023)