The Radcliffe Fellowship Program and its predecessor, the Bunting Institute, have a long tradition of supporting writers and scholars in the humanities. Many scholars and students have used the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, the premier women's history archive in the United States, to further their work.

The Radcliffe Institute's interdisciplinary mission aims to advance understanding of the world through the humanities, and allows scholars, writers, and poets to work in tandem and in dialogue with each other and with researchers in other disciplines.

Humanities Clusters

Research clusters at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study draw on the Radcliffe Fellowship Program to bring scholars together to focus on particular themes, with a Harvard faculty member as convenor. The scholars in a research cluster spend a year together in residence at the Institute, but their work as a group usually has a longer life than a one-year fellowship. For the residential year of any particular cluster, fellowship applicants with similar interests are encouraged to apply and to indicate the way in which their project will contribute to the topic.

For the first time, Radcliffe welcomes this year a cluster of scholars in the humanities. Four historians will explore the promise and perils of biography as a mode for understanding the past.

Questions about current projects or future opportunities in the humanities should be directed to Nancy F. Cott, Pforzheimer Family Foundation Director of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library and Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University.