Exploratory Seminars
The Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar Program provides funding to scholars, practitioners, and artists for collaboration in an interdisciplinary exploration of early-stage ideas.
Our program encourages intellectual risk taking as participants gather in an intensive seminar setting to explore new fields of research and inquiry. Hundreds of Harvard faculty members and Radcliffe fellows have benefited from this program, which challenges its participants to reimagine the boundaries of knowledge through multidisciplinary discussion.
See list of 2022–2023 exploratory seminars
How to Apply
Applications are currently being accepted. To apply, please submit an application through the application portal. Applications are due by 11:59 PM ET on Friday, October 11, 2024.
- Supports one- to two-day, by-invitation, in-person-only seminars
- Hosted on the Harvard Radcliffe Institute campus, subject to Institute policies and programmatic guidelines
- Accommodates 12–16 total participants (including leaders and co-leaders), subject to budgetary limitations
- Lead applicant must be either a Harvard ladder faculty member (tenured or tenure-track, including Harvard Medical School faculty appointed as instructors), from any School, or a former or current Radcliffe fellow; co-applicants may apply with lead applicants who meet eligibility requirements
- Applications are peer reviewed
These proposals:
- explore the viability of early-stage research ideas in any discipline or multiple disciplines
- invite the perspectives of diverse arrays of participants and stakeholders to the discussion
- integrate senior and junior scholars from institutions in the greater Boston area, across the United States, or around the world
- demonstrate risk-taking and creativity
- Radcliffe supports engaged scholarship. We welcome proposals that connect research to public policy, pressing social issues, and the active engagement of audiences beyond academia.
- We welcome proposals relevant to the Institute’s focus areas: climate change and climate justice; academic freedom and connecting across difference.
- Reflecting Radcliffe’s unique history and institutional legacy, we welcome proposals that focus on women, gender, and society and/or draw on the Schlesinger Library’s rich collections.
- In partnership with the Harvard Center for International Development, we also welcome proposals that center on issues of gender equity in developing economies.
Friday, October 11, 2024, at 11:59 PM ET
We invite you to attend one of our virtual information sessions, where you can ask questions in real time about the program. If you are interested in attending, please sign up using this link. You are welcome to attend any session that fits your schedule; but some sessions will focus on different disciplinary areas for Q&A purposes.
Please read our FAQs. If you still have questions, please contact Don Tontiplaphol, associate director of Academic Ventures and Engagement, at don_tontiplaphol@radcliffe.harvard.edu.