Fein & Lapidus Fellowship, Call for Applications

March 15, 2023

by Melanie Meyers

AJHS is now accepting applications for the 2023 Fein & Lapidus Fellowship.

Goal: The Fein & Lapidus Fellowships are intended to support substantive academic research utilizing the archival collections held by the American Jewish Historical Society, at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.

Eligibility: Fellowships may be awarded to graduate students pursuing dissertation research, postdocs, contingent faculty, and tenure-track faculty who do not have access to other research funds. The selection committee particularly encourages graduate students to apply and is open to all researchers, whether their primary field of study is American Jewish history or not, who have reason to use AJHS collections.

Use of Fellowship: Funds may be used to:

Subvent travel and living expenses for research at the AJHS archive, housed at the Center for Jewish History (when the reading room is open to the public);
Provide summer compensation for significant remote research in digitized AJHS collections;
Pay for the digitization of undigitized archival materials from the AJHS collection.

Award Amounts and Terms: Fellowships up to $2500 will be granted. At the end of the fellowship period, recipients will be expected to submit a 500-word report. Additionally, grantees may be invited to participate in AJHS seminars or conferences to present their research, or to write for the AJHS website and/or blog to discuss their project.

Application: Send as an email to info@ajhs.org with the subject line “Fellowship 2023 Application,” by Sunday, April 30th, 2023. The application should include the following materials:

A two- to three-page description of the project that includes specific references to relevant archival collections at AJHS that will be consulted. Applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with the AJHS collections staff in advance of submitting an application. Please contact Melanie Meyers at mmeyers@ajhs.org with questions about materials.
A CV.
A budget of no more than one page that may include, among other line items, travel and housing expenses, daily per diem (capped at $100/day), digitization fees, and technology costs.
Graduate student applicants are required to include name and contact information for primary dissertation advisor, who will be contacted to fill out a brief form attesting to student’s plan and progress.

Visit the AJHS Academic Awards page for more academic opportunities.

Melanie Meyers

Melanie Meyers is the Deputy Director of the American Jewish Historical Society, and Chair of Collections and Engagement. Prior to joining AJHS in 2018, she was the Senior Manager for Reference and Outreach at The Center for Jewish History, New York City. She has served as an adjunct lecturer at The Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University, where she has taught a variety of classes for the special collections/rare books specialization, including “History of the Book” and “Reference and Instruction in Special Collections.” She has served as a curator on multiple exhibitions, including “Nourishing Traditions: Jewish Cookbooks and the Stories They Tell,” and “Jews in Space: Members of the Tribe in Orbit.” She has worked with special collections in a variety of settings, including private, non-profit, and academic institutions, and has served on outside evaluation teams for other repositories. She is a board member of the Hawthorne Foundation, an organization that assists individuals with autism and developmental disabilities, and lives with her husband and two children in Brooklyn.