Fellowship on Eighteenth-Century Ireland

Joel W. Herman has been awarded the A. C. Elias, Jr., Irish-American Research Travel Fellowship for 2021 by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).

The award will assist Mr. Herman, a Ph.D. student in history at Trinity College Dublin, in producing his thesis on “Revolutionary Currents: Ideas, Information, and the Imperial Public Spheres in Dublin and New York, 1776-1782″. When it is safe and prudent to travel, Joel intends to use the fellowship to conduct research at the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society Library.

Joel Herman took his MPhil in Early Modern History, with First Class Honours, at TCD in 2018. His essay “Imagined Nations: Newspapers, Identity, and the Free Trade Crisis of 1779” appears in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (2020).

The Fellowship

The Fellowship was endowed by the renowned independent scholar A.C. Elias Jr (1944-2008).

It offers US$2,500 per annum to support “documentary scholarship on Ireland in the period between the Treaty of Limerick (1691) and the Act of Union (1800), by enabling North American-based scholars to travel to Ireland and Irish-based scholars to travel to North America for furthering their research.”

Projects conducting original research on any aspect of eighteenth-century Ireland qualify for consideration, but recipients must be members of ASECS who have permanent residence in the United States or Canada or be members of its Irish sister organization, The Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, residing in Ireland.

2022 Fellowship Competition

Applications for the 2022 A.C. Elias Jr Irish-American Research Fellowship are due before 15 November 2021 and should consist of:

  • A short curriculum vitae (no more than 3 pp.)
  • A narrative description of the project, treating its contribution to the field and the work to be done during the proposed research period (no more than 4 pp.),
  • An outline budget for the travel and accommodation costs associated with the project

These materials should be sent by email attachment in one Word or PDF file before 15 November 2021 to the two trustees of the A.C. Elias Jr Irish-American Fellowship. The trustees are:

  1. Dr. James May (jem4@psu.edu), 1423 Hillcrest Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17603, USA.
  2. Dr. Jason McElligott (jason.mcelligott@marshlibrary.ie), Director, Marsh’s Library, St. Patrick’s Close, Dublin 8, Ireland.

In addition, applicants must arrange for a signed letter of recommendation in support of the proposed project from two separate referees to be sent to both trustees. If referees cannot supply PDFs of signed letters, they may mail hardcopies of a signed letter to both trustees at the addresses above.

Public Health Advice

Please note that due to the current pandemic, the trustees reserve the right to delay, defer or cancel an award for 2022 if public health advice in North America or Ireland would render it unsafe or imprudent for a scholar to travel to conduct research.

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