Penn Faculty

Penn Faculty Fellowships

The Wolf Humanities Center offers fellowships each year to standing faculty at Penn in the humanities and allied departments. The fellowships are for research that relates to the Center's theme for the year in which the award is granted.

  • Tenure-track assistant professors receive a $5000 stipend payable to your research fund. 
  • Tenured professors may apply for either a $5000 research fund stipend OR one to two course reliefs. The Wolf Humanities Center provides course replacement money for up to two courses, to be paid to the fellow’s department at Penn’s LPS instructor rate and to be used solely for course replacement during the 2024–2025 academic year. Advance written approval of any course relief request is required from the applicant’s department chair. Scholars who have already had one semester of course relief not given as compensation for service between Fall 2021 and Spring 2024 may only apply for a $5000 research fund stipend or a single course relief.

Wolf's fellowship program does not support lecturers or professors of practice at this time.

Fellows are required to attend the Wolf Humanities Center's weekly Mellon seminars (Tuesdays, noon–1:30pm)* and present their research at one of the sessions during the year. In addition to Penn faculty, seminar members include Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows, regional faculty, the Center's director and topic director, and others.

*NOTE: Interested applicants are advised to check well ahead with their department/s to avoid conflicts in scheduling classes and other obligations.


Call for Applications, 2024–2025 

Research Topic: Keywords
Application deadline: March 20, 2024

Applications are now being accepted for research on the topic of Keywords, the Center's topic for 2024–25. Please apply via the Interfolio application portal.

Applicants are required to submit an up-to-date CV and a single PDF including the following:

  • Project Title
  • Project Abstract (125 words maximum)
  • Project Proposal (approx. 1000 words)

Tenured Faculty Applicants: if you are applying for course relief, please ask your department chair to email Sara Varney by March 20, 2024 with their written approval of your application and course relief request.