Hilltop Fellowship

The Hilltop Short-Term Research Fellowship

The Hilltop Fellowship provides opportunities for individuals with a specific need for the Special Collections at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library.

Stipend: $4,000/month

Length: 4 weeks

Who can apply: Scholars working in any field that is part of Catholic Studies. Graduate student applicants must be ABD by the application deadline. Ph.D. candidates, postdoctoral scholars, and scholars with terminal degrees who live and work outside of the Washington metropolitan area are eligible to apply.

Deadline: January 31, 2025

The fellowship application is currently available here. Applications are accepted through January 31, 2025 for fellowships to be activated within the 2025 calendar year.

Hilltop Fellowships provide opportunities for individuals with a specific need for the Special Collections at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library to advance a significant scholarly project on a topic related to Catholicism in any of the disciplines composing Catholic Studies, such as theology and philosophy, history and literature, the arts and the natural and social sciences.

The fellowships are available for a four-week period with a stipend of $4,000. During that month, the fellow will have status as a Sponsored University Associate (SUA) and access to Georgetown University Library. As a Hilltop Fellow with SUA status, the awardee will have unrestricted access to the Library’s general circulating collections, databases, and non-circulating holdings in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections. Awardees may combine their Hilltop Fellowship award with other stipendiary support and sabbatical funding. Local residency is required for the month of fellowship.

The library’s collections are especially suitable for studies of Catholicism in the U.S. colonial and early national periods, as well as of Jesuit activity from the colonial period to the present in North America. The Catholic Studies Program and the Booth Family Center for Special Collections are especially eager to encourage projects that focus on American Indian, African American, and women’s histories. Some collections, in whole or part,  require special permissions to use, copy, and publish. It is the responsibility of the fellows, in consultation with library staff, to obtain such permissions.

Among the larger, relevant components of the university’s Special Collections are:

• The Georgetown University Archives (eighteenth century to the present)
• The Maryland Province (Jesuit) Archives (seventeenth century to the present)
• The Woodstock Theological Collections (includes general and special collection materials)

The first two of these constitute the heart of the Jesuit/Georgetown “slavery archives.”

This list is not exhaustive, and applicants are encouraged to review the Application Information page and the website of the Booth Family Center for Special Collections, which includes multiple finders’ guides.

Eligibility

• doctoral candidates, post-doctoral researchers, and scholars with terminal degrees
• Applicants’ usual work location and personal residence must be outside the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Employees, faculty, and students of Georgetown University are not eligible for the fellowship.
• graduate student applicants must be ABD by the application deadline.

Application

Please see the detailed Application Information & Application link.

• Cover letter
• Curriculum vitae
• Project abstract of no more than 300 words
• Research proposal of no more than 1,500 words
• One-page bibliography
• Letters of recommendation (2) are required of doctoral candidates

Expectations

• Within a month of receiving the award, awardees must indicate their acceptance of the award and the four-week timeframe of their visit.
• The fellowship award period must be completed within the calendar year of notification.
• The scholarly community at Georgetown University looks forward to Fellows’ participating in the intellectual life of the university and to learning about the fellows’ findings toward the end of their stay.

Deadlines & Award Announcements

• Application Deadline: 11:59 PM EDT, January 31, 2025
• Award Announcements: February 28, 2025

Contact Us

For more information on the terms and scope of the fellowship, please contact Ryan Maher, SJ