University of Michigan U-M Faculty Fellowships 2027–2028: Salary and Benefits Support for Humanities Research

University of Michigan U-M Faculty Fellowships 2027–2028: Salary and Benefits Support for Humanities Research

The University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities is accepting applications for its 2027–2028 Faculty Fellowship. The award is designed for eligible University of Michigan faculty members who need a full academic year to pursue serious humanities or arts research in residence while taking part in a small, in-person interdisciplinary community.

This is not a portable scholarship or a general research grant for applicants anywhere in the world. It is an internal University of Michigan fellowship with a clear institutional benefit: selected faculty are released from their usual teaching and service duties while continuing to receive their normal salary and benefits. The Institute for the Humanities then shares the salary and benefits cost according to the applicant’s school or college. For LSA faculty, the institute directly funds 50 percent. For faculty in other schools and colleges, it funds 50 percent up to a cap of $75,000, with the balance funded by the administrative school or college.

The 2027–2028 application deadline is Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. Applications go through the university’s InfoReady system. A complete application includes a curriculum vitae, a tightly limited project description, a short personal statement, a writing or scholarly work sample, and an acknowledgment form signed by the head or heads of the units holding the applicant’s funded appointments. Recommendation letters are no longer required.

Key details

The institute’s published page is the controlling source for the current cycle. The financial figures describe the institute’s contribution and special fellowship terms; they should not be read as an extra cash award paid on top of a faculty member’s normal compensation.

What the fellowship provides

The central benefit is protected research time. Faculty fellows are released from their ordinary teaching and service duties for the fellowship year, remain in residence at the institute, and continue receiving their normal salary and benefits. This structure matters for applicants whose research has been delayed by course preparation, administration, advising, committee work, or other recurring obligations. The fellowship creates a defined period in which the main job is to make meaningful progress on a substantial project.

The fellowship is residential for the full academic year, from August 30 through May 31. Residence is not a decorative label. Fellows are expected to attend the weekly two-hour fellows seminar, participate in the institute’s life, and attend the Hear, Here: Humanities Up Close series. Each fellow also presents a lecture in that series. An applicant therefore needs both a project that deserves concentrated time and a credible willingness to contribute to a shared intellectual environment.

The Institute for the Humanities is intentionally interdisciplinary. The selection committee does not describe the award as a departmental writing retreat. It seeks a group in which fellows can contribute to and gain from exchange across disciplines, and it aims for variety and balance in the represented fields. A strong application should explain the project’s humanities or arts content in terms that an informed scholar outside the applicant’s exact specialty can understand.

There is a distinct Norman Freehling Faculty Fellowship for Flint and Dearborn faculty members. The institute guarantees at least one fellowship to a faculty member on one of those campuses. The institute funds 100 percent of the faculty member’s salary and benefits for the fellowship year and provides $5,000 in research support. That research support can be used for research travel, conference attendance, and research or teaching materials. It cannot be used to buy equipment such as laptops, computers, or iPads. Up to $2,500 of funds remaining at the end of the fellowship may be transferred to the faculty member’s research account in the home unit.

Who is eligible

The published eligibility rules require a full-time, tenured or tenure-track appointment on one of the University of Michigan’s three campuses: Ann Arbor, Flint, or Dearborn. The applicant’s work should be in the humanities or arts, and the proposed project must make sense for the institute’s interdisciplinary fellowship community. This is a faculty fellowship, so doctoral students, independent researchers without a qualifying U-M appointment, emeritus faculty, and applicants at other universities should not treat it as an open external call.

Several timing and leave rules narrow the pool further. Faculty may not apply in the year their tenure will be decided. LSA faculty must have returned from an academic leave to one year of active duty before becoming eligible; a Modified Duties leave does not count as an academic leave for this rule. A faculty member can apply during the year of active duty for a fellowship in the following year. Newly hired tenure-track faculty must teach for two consecutive years before taking up a fellowship, so the fellowship may occur in the third year of employment or later.

Assistant professors who are not renewed during their third-year review cannot accept a fellowship for their terminal year. University of Michigan emeritus faculty members are not eligible. A faculty member who already held an Institute for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship becomes eligible to apply again six years after the earlier award ended. The fellowship year does not count toward sabbatical equity.

Applicants should also check restrictions that arise from other internal awards. Faculty eligible for college-funded leave who accept this fellowship are expected to combine that support with institute support during the fellowship year, except for nurturance leaves for assistant professors. A faculty member cannot apply in the same year for this fellowship and a Michigan Humanities Award offered by OVPR and LSA or a fellowship in the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies. Before preparing the application, the institute asks prospective applicants to consult their chairs or deans about unit policies and expectations. Applicants must notify the head or heads of the units in which they hold funded appointments that they intend to apply.

What the research year involves

The fellowship is a year of research, but the institute also sets participation expectations. Faculty fellows must be in residence for the academic year, attend and participate in the weekly two-hour fellows seminar, and attend the institute’s Hear, Here series throughout the year. They must present a lecture in that series and are expected to take part in the institute’s broader life, including meeting undergraduate interns and attending relevant events.

Those requirements make the fellowship a good fit for a project that benefits from discussion, testing, and public articulation during the year. A book manuscript, archive-based study, creative project, edition, or other substantial work may fit if the applicant can show why the institute’s community and uninterrupted time matter. The official page does not prescribe one research output or promise publication. Applicants should therefore describe the deliverable they can realistically advance, rather than promise a vague transformation of an entire field.

The project description should also be readable outside a narrow subfield. The selection committee judges the promise and significance of the proposed research, its humanities and arts content, and the quality, significance, and breadth of the applicant’s prior work. A project may be sophisticated without making its significance inaccessible. Define the central question, explain what is original or consequential about it, identify the evidence or materials, and set out what can be completed during the fellowship year.

Application materials and process

Applications must be submitted through the University of Michigan’s InfoReady application. The institute lists seven required elements, although the first is the cover sheet built into the online form:

1. The Institute for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship Application Cover Sheet within InfoReady.
2. A curriculum vitae; the institute accepts either a long or short form.
3. A project description of no more than 1,000 words.
4. A personal statement of no more than 250 words describing the applicant’s career trajectory, how the fellowship will support the proposed research, and why the applicant seeks an in-person interdisciplinary community.
5. A writing sample, such as an article or book chapter edited to no more than 5,000 words excluding footnotes and bibliography, or a scholarly work sample. Creative applicants may provide audiovisual material or a portfolio through a website URL.
6. An Acknowledgment of Application form signed by the head or heads of the units in which the applicant holds funded appointments, uploaded with the other materials.
7. No recommendation letters; the institute says they are no longer required.

The deadline is October 14, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. The institute gives December 2026 as the approximate notification date. It also warns that applicants should receive an email confirming that the application was received and is complete in InfoReady. If that confirmation does not arrive within 24 hours, applicants should check for errors or missing documents and may need to resubmit. The institute is not responsible for applications that fail to reach the InfoReady site.

How to prepare a competitive application

Start with institutional fit, not prose polish. Confirm your campus, appointment status, tenure timing, leave history, and school or college rules. Ask your chair or dean how the unit handles the fellowship’s salary-sharing arrangement and what signature or notification process is required. This prevents a common failure mode: producing an elegant project description before discovering that an internal eligibility or leave condition cannot be met.

Next, build the project around a specific research year. The 1,000-word limit rewards selectivity. State the problem, the intervention or method, the primary materials, and the concrete work product. If the project is a book, identify the chapters or stages you expect to complete. If it is archival, explain the collections and research tasks. If it is creative, describe the form, process, and critical or scholarly context. The committee does not need a complete dissertation prospectus; it needs a persuasive account of significant work that this fellowship year can advance.

Treat the 250-word personal statement as a separate document. The project description answers what you will do. The personal statement answers why this fellowship, why now, and why an in-person interdisciplinary community is important to your career. Repeating the project summary wastes scarce space. Instead, connect your trajectory, the current bottleneck in your work, and the kind of exchange you will bring to the fellows seminar.

Choose the writing or scholarly work sample for evidence, not prestige. The strongest sample is one that lets reviewers see the quality of your thinking, argument, evidence, and style without needing a long explanation. Edit to the 5,000-word limit where necessary, preserve enough context to make the excerpt intelligible, and check that the file does not accidentally include an incomplete introduction or references detached from the argument. Creative applicants should make the portfolio URL stable and easy to navigate.

Finally, make the community contribution concrete. The institute asks fellows to participate in seminars, events, and the Hear, Here series. Mention the conversations, methods, or perspectives you can contribute without turning the application into a list of networking intentions. The goal is to show that your research will be strengthened by the group and that the group will benefit from having you in it.

Common mistakes to avoid

The first mistake is treating continued salary as a bonus stipend. The fellowship releases faculty from regular duties and preserves compensation; the institute’s published support is a cost-sharing arrangement. Budget and negotiate accordingly. For applicants outside LSA, confirm how the $75,000 cap interacts with the home school or college’s share rather than assuming the institute covers half of every salary without limit.

The second mistake is ignoring residence and participation. A proposal that assumes the applicant will remain elsewhere, skip the weekly seminar, or treat the lecture as optional conflicts with the fellowship’s published expectations. Resolve travel, teaching, clinical, administrative, or other obligations before submission.

The third is missing internal approvals. The signed acknowledgment form is not a recommendation letter, but it is still required. Notify the heads of the funded units early, and verify whether your school or college asks for additional steps. Do not leave a signature request until the final day.

The fourth is exceeding the limits or sending a generic package. The project description is capped at 1,000 words, the personal statement at 250, and the writing sample at 5,000 words excluding footnotes and bibliography. The committee will consider only complete applications that follow the word and page limits. A short, specific argument is safer than a dense document that needs exceptions.

The fifth is applying without checking disqualifying timing rules. The tenure-decision restriction, two-year teaching requirement for new tenure-track faculty, six-year return interval for former fellows, and restrictions involving other internal fellowships are material. Read the official page and confirm your interpretation with the institute or your unit before investing in the final draft.

Frequently asked questions

Is this fellowship open to faculty outside the University of Michigan?

No. The listed eligibility rule requires a full-time, tenured or tenure-track appointment on the Ann Arbor, Flint, or Dearborn campus. It is not an external national fellowship.

Does every fellow receive a separate cash stipend?

Not according to the published terms. The core benefit is release from normal teaching and service duties while the faculty member continues to receive normal salary and benefits. The institute funds 50 percent for LSA faculty and 50 percent up to $75,000 for faculty in other schools and colleges. The Norman Freehling Fellowship includes $5,000 in research support in addition to full salary and benefits funding.

Are recommendation letters required?

No. The current application list says recommendation letters are no longer required. Applicants do need the signed Acknowledgment of Application form from the head or heads of the units holding their funded appointments.

Can an applicant defer the award?

No. The institute states that fellowship awards may not be deferred to a future year under any circumstances. If the 2027–2028 year cannot work, resolve that before accepting an offer.

Can the research support buy a computer?

For the Norman Freehling Faculty Fellowship, no. The institute specifically excludes equipment, including laptops, computers, and iPads, from the $5,000 research support. That special fellowship allows research travel, conference attendance, and research or teaching materials, with a limited possible transfer of remaining funds to the home research account.

When will applicants hear back?

The institute lists December 2026 as the approximate notification date. It does not publish a more precise notification day on the current page.

Official links and next steps

Start with the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities U-M Faculty Fellowships page. It contains the current eligibility rules, financial arrangements, expectations, required materials, deadline, and the InfoReady application link. Use the application page rather than an old announcement or a third-party summary, because internal fellowship rules can change between cycles.

If you appear eligible, the practical order is simple: confirm your appointment and leave status; speak with your chair, dean, or relevant unit head; choose a project that can make visible progress from August 30 through May 31; select a concise sample; draft the project description and personal statement separately; obtain the signed acknowledgment; and submit through InfoReady before October 14, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. After submitting, look for the completion email within 24 hours and follow up promptly if it does not arrive.

This fellowship is most valuable for a faculty member who can explain both sides of the exchange: why protected time and the institute’s resources will materially advance the research, and what the applicant will contribute to an active interdisciplinary community for the full academic year.