The Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) at the University of Pennsylvania invites applications from advanced doctoral students in the School of Arts & Sciences for a one-year PPEH Environmental Humanities Dissertation Completion Fellowship. We seek applicants whose research, teaching, and public engagements support and complement PPEH’s core commitments:

• broadly interdisciplinary, collaborative research on the environment across the arts and sciences
• arts-driven inquiry into place, particularly our campus and the City of Philadelphia as well as urban ecology in other global contexts
• public engagement, particularly in and with environmental justice communities and concerns
• the creation and growth of living archives via practices of urgent collection

Applicants must be enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania and plan to defend their dissertation during the 2021–2022 academic year to be eligible.

Beginning in Summer 2021, the selected Dissertation Completion Fellow will receive 12 months of support covering tuition, fees, and summer research funds. The fellowship’s summer funds will enable the student to plan and carry out public engagements throughout the course of the year. The Dissertation Completion Fellow will be expected both to pursue their own research agenda as well as actively to participate in PPEH’s ongoing projects and initiatives, in Philadelphia and beyond.  

Application Materials:

• 1500-word Research Statement in which the candidate describes how their dissertation project intersects with the environmental humanities and addresses how their work  fosters collaboration across disciplines
• CV
• 500-word Public Engagement Statement about how their project will build wider public engagements in and through the environmental humanities
• Letter of recommendation from the Ph.D. advisor or graduate chair, which also confirms a dissertation completion timeline

Submission Instructions:

• Application materials must be collated into a single PDF and emailed by May 15, 2021 to director@ppehlab.org.
• Letter of recommendation can be sent directly from faculty advisor/chair under separate cover.