Radcliffe Fellowship Program

The Radcliffe Fellowship Program is a fellowship grant from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University that supports scholars, scientists, artists, and public intellectuals with outstanding records of achievement and exceptional promise.

Fellows receive stipends of $80,000 to $100,000 for one academic year of independent study and research at Harvard, along with office space, library access, and engagement with a cross-disciplinary community of approximately 50 fellows. The program is open to applicants across all disciplines with no restrictions on topic, field, or methodology.

Eligible applicants include academics at any career stage, creative artists, and public intellectuals from the United States and internationally; applicants may not hold a Harvard appointment during the fellowship year. Applications for the 2027-2028 fellowship year are due October 1, 2026.

Fellowship | Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University Search for people, topics, events, etc. Ann-Sophie Barwich, the 2025–2026 Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow and a philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist, is writing a book that develops a cognitive theory of scientific practice.

Photo by Tony Rinaldo The Fellowship Program annually selects and supports artists, scholars, and public intellectuals who bring both a record of achievement and exceptional promise to the Institute. Radcliffe fellows are individuals at different stages of their careers who come to the Institute from across the United States and around the world and represent a broad range of academic, professional, and artistic fields.

Fellows work on an individual project—a novel, a film, a map of the Milky Way—while mining and deepening the knowledge, ingenuity, and talent of the Harvard University community. Projects range from the poetic to the cosmic. Past fellows include Jill Lepore, Samantha Power, Zadie Smith, Elizabeth Warren, and the Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer.

Become a Radcliffe Fellow Graduate Student Fellowships Radcliffe Research Partnerships Meet Our 2025–2026 Fellows See All 2025–2026 Fellows Breaking Silos and Making Transformative Discoveries Chimp Change—What Great Ape Adolescence Reveals About Us In the Heat of This Moment: Diana Hernández and the Struggle over Energy Inequity Substance Use Disorders Among Women: Reasons for Concern—and Hope The Stories Trees Hold—America’s Black Botanical Legacy Adultery, Privacy, and the State When Politics Gets Personal A Deep Look into Trump-Era America Merging Math with a Mission What Is the Heliosphere—and What Happened to It 3 Million Years Ago?

Reading Recommendations from the 2024-2025 Fellows Honoring Mexico's Disappeared Math—It’s Not Just Numbers Black Traditions of Mardi Gras A Playbook for Policy Change An Unconventional Path to Computer Science Artificial Intelligence—How Does It Work?

Let’s Talk about Climate Resilience Tracking a Transformation A Tapestry of Sound and Community Bringing the Past to the Present 12 Reading Recommendations from Radcliffe’s 2023–2024 Fellows Using Machine Learning to Listen to Whales A Robot Swims with the Fishes Ayodele Casel on Creativity The US Pain and Overdose Crises The Unique Power of Cartoons Healthcare Disparities for People with Disabilities Harvard Radcliffe Institute Announces 2025–2026 Fellows The Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program offers scholars in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and arts—as well as writers, journalists, and other distinguished professionals—a rare chance to pursue ambitious projects for a full year in a vibrant interdisciplinary setting amid the resources of Harvard.

The 2025–2026 worldwide cohort marks our 26th class of fellows. I absolutely loved my Radcliffe experience! I really, truly can't explain how life-changing it was for me.

There were so many interactions with others that fed my work in myriad ways—many of which (I'm sure) are not even apparent to me at the moment but will be gradually revealed over time. I'm so incredibly grateful for my time here at Radcliffe. 2014–2015 Lillian Gollay Knafel Fellow and writer We had the freedom to push toward a deep understanding of our subjects.

That’s one of the things the Radcliffe Institute does best: It allows for room to grow. As we presented our work and learned about one another's projects, there was a sense of self-consciousness falling away, a developing sense of play and exploration, a sense of listening, of interest across genres and across fields, one that introduced creative energy into everyone’s work.

2013–2014 Lisa Goldberg Fellow and fiction writer The Radcliffe Fellowship Program is by far the most intellectually stimulating experience I have had in my decade at Harvard. 2019–2020 Mildred Londa Weisman Fellow and a professor of astronomy at Harvard