At a Glance


March 19, 2021 12:00 pm EDT

Ph.D. students from all departments are eligible if the focus of the dissertation has an area studies and/or language component.

Funds dissertation research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies for six or twelve months

Iyman Ahmed

ID# 1502 | Last Updated: Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Application Procedure

  1. Complete this interest and eligibility form.
  2. Review the official application guidelines.
  3. Review FAQ and Student Applicant Instructions.
  4. Align research statement with the Technical Review Form.
  5. Submit G5 online application.

Purpose

This U.S. Department of Education program provides grants to colleges and universities to fund individual doctoral students who conduct research in other countries, in modern foreign languages and area studies for periods of six- to 12-months.

Students may request funding for a period of no fewer than six months and no more than 12 months.

This grant is available to Ph.D. candidates who wish to engage in full-time dissertation research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies. Projects focusing on Western Europe are not eligible for funding. The grant provides travel expenses, maintenance allowance for the grantee and the grantee’s dependents, books and other research-related expenses and health insurance.

Eligibility

Ph.D. students from all departments are eligible if the focus of the dissertation has an area studies and/or language component. Field work in English is generally not supported.

Specifically, a student is eligible to receive a fellowship if he or she:

  • Is a citizen or national of the United States or is a permanent resident of the United States;
  • Is a graduate student in good standing at an institution of higher education in the United States who, when the fellowship begins, is admitted to candidacy in a doctoral program in modern foreign languages and area studies at that institution;
  • Is planning a teaching career in the United States upon graduation; and
  • Possesses adequate skills in the language(s) necessary to carry out the dissertation project.

Prior Competition Priorities

Research projects must focus on one or more of the following geographic areas: Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, South Asia, the Near East, Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and the Western Hemisphere (excluding the United States and its territories).

Additionally, competitive priority points are awarded for projects in the field of economics, engineering, international development, global education, mathematics, political science, public health, science or technology proposed by an applicant who will use advanced language proficiency in one of 78 Less Commonly Taught Languages.

The U.S. Department of Education’s list of Less Commonly Taught Languages is as follows: Akan (Twi-Fante), Albanian, Amharic, Arabic (all dialects), Armenian, Azeri (Azerbaijani), Balochi, Bamanakan (Bamana, Bambara, Mandikan, Mandingo, Maninka, Dyula), Belarusian, Bengali (Bangla), Berber (all languages), Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cebuano (Visayan), Chechen, Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (Gan), Chinese (Mandarin), Chinese (Min), Chinese (Wu), Croatian, Dari, Dinka, Georgian, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew (Modern), Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Kazakh, Khmer (Cambodian), Kirghiz, Korean, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Kurdish (Sorani), Lao, Malay (Bahasa Melayu or Malaysian), Malayalam, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Oromo, Panjabi, Pashto, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese (all varieties), Quechua, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala (Sinhalese), Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tigrigna, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur/Uigur, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba and Zulu.

Finally, competitive priority points are also awarded to applicants with research projects in one or more of the following geographic areas:

Sub-Saharan Africa: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Réunion, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.

Southeast Asia: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam.

Application Instructions

Applicants submit a proposal electronically through G5, the Department of Education’s Grant Management system. It is recommended that applicants format their narrative proposal using the Fulbright-Hays Technical Review Form as a guide.

Applicants are reminded that the Federal Register Notice is the official document for application guidelines and that applicants should not rely upon any information that is inconsistent with the guidance contained within it.

Related Information Sessions & Events

There are no upcoming events at this time.