Short-Term Fellowships

Short-term LCP fellowships support dissertation, postdoctoral, and independent scholarly research. For the 2025-26 cycle, fellowships associated with the Library Company’s four academic programs (African American History, Early American Economy and Society, Visual Culture, and Women’s History) will be offered, as will those in the fields of the history of the book/publishing industry, history of medicine (particularly popular medicine), and the Innovation Fellowship for Independent Researchers (artist, author, public historian, or other independent researcher).

Historically, the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania have jointly offered many opportunities for support in the form of one-month fellowships for advanced research in residence in either or both institutions. For this year, the two programs will be administered separately. (To learn about fellowships made available separately by The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, please visit the HSP website.)

Located adjacent to each other in Center City Philadelphia, the two independent research libraries have complementary collections capable of supporting research in a variety of fields and disciplines relating to the history of the United States in its Atlantic world context from the 17th through the 19th centuries, as well as Mid-Atlantic regional history to the present.

Image: Commemorative postcard for the Elks Convention held in Philadelphia in 1907. Brightbill 59.

Short-term Fellowships Awarded by the Library Company of Philadelphia
  • The Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEAES) awards short-term fellowships that support research into the origins and development of early American political economy, broadly conceived, to roughly 1850. Fellows may investigate such topics as the history of commerce, finance, technology, manufacturing, agriculture, internal improvements, and economic policy making.
  • The Program in African American History (PAAH) awards short-term fellowships to support research in any aspect of African American history prior to 1900.
  • The Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch Program in Women’s History awards a short-term fellowship to support research on any aspect of women’s history up to 1880.
  • The William H. Helfand Fellowship for American Visual Culture, awarded by the Visual Culture Program, supports research on pictorial imagery in printed and graphic works from the colonial era to the early 20th century.
  • The James N. Green Research Fellowship in the History of the Book in America and The William Reese Company Fellowship in American Bibliography support research relating to print culture up to 1900.
  • The William H. Helfand Fellowship for American Medicine, Science, and Society and The Charles E. Rosenberg Fellowship in the History of Health and Medicine support research in that subject area to about 1920.
  • The Innovation Fellowship for Independent Researchers supports the research of artists, authors, public historians, or other independent researchers.
Applications

Applications for the 2025-26 short-term fellowships cycle will be accepted from September 1, 2024, until the submission deadline of January 15, 2025. Decisions will be announced by March 15. 

The stipend is $3,000 for a four-week period between June 1 and May 31, with flexible scheduling available.

Application instructions are available here.

For more information

For general information about fellowships and application procedures, email fellowships@librarycompany.org.

See the Fellowships FAQ page for additional information and contact details.