The Humanities Institute, which is a division of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden, is offering an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for 2016 for current PhD students or recent postdoctoral researchers. Interested applicants are encouraged to submit an application for a project that would expand the Garden’s role in humanities scholarship.
Fellows will conduct research that involves innovative interdisciplinary approaches to areas such as landscape and garden design; botanical and environmental history, philosophy and policy; urban design and urban social history; cultural anthropology; and botanical exploration and the illustration—with a primary focus on areas of inquiry that connect nature to human nature. The Institute is also interested in combining knowledge from fields within the arts and sciences to promote new thought about the history of botany and landscape and garden design and to forward new solutions for modern society’s relationship with the built environment. Access will be given to the historical collections of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, the Archives, the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, and the Living Collections, which include the 250-acre historic landscape and greenhouses of the New York Botanical Garden.
The tenure of the fellowship is nine months and can be activated as early as May 1, 2016, and no later than September 1, 2016. Fellows are required to devote themselves to their research and also participate in the Humanities Institute’s activities, which include symposia, colloquia, exhibitions, and various lectures in other departments campuswide, and give a presentation about their own research.
The application must include a curriculum of education, professional experience, honors, awards, and publications; a Project Proposal including a 2-3 page statement that includes an overview of the project one plans to include with an explanation of the research’s significance in the field and the manner in which it will contribute to the larger field of studies related to the environmental humanities; a preliminary schedule of work that will be conquered during the fellowship; and three letters of recommendation to be sent electronically by the recommenders.
The deadline for all application material is March 10, 2016.
For further information about the fellowship, click here.
Any further questions can be directed to Vanessa Bezemer Sellers, Humanities Institute Program Coordinator, at vsellers@nybg.org.