Getty Foundation Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships

Getty Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships are intended for emerging researchers to complete work on projects related to the Scholars Program’s annual theme or African American Art History Initiative (AAAHI). While in residence, fellows may pursue research projects, complete dissertations, or expand dissertations for publication. Recipients also make use of Getty Research Institute (GRI) collections, join in weekly lectures, and participate in intellectual life at Getty. Predoctoral fellows may be in residence at the Getty Center, while Postdoctoral fellows may be in residence at the Getty Center or Getty Villa.

Background

Getty Scholars Program

Getty Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships are part of the Getty Scholars Program so that a mix of senior scholars and junior fellows compose the cohort. The cohort's research projects are focused on an annual theme. Since 1985, the program has hosted nearly 1,500 scholars from over fifty countries to conduct research on art history and visual studies while residing in Los Angeles. Selected projects have spanned geographical regions and time periods, from ancient to contemporary eras. The three main categories of grants are:

1. Scholar Grants for established researchers and professionals who have held PhDs for at least 5 years and/or possess strong records of publication and professional activity, at the Getty Center or Getty Villa
2. Postdoctoral Fellowships for recently granted PhDs at the Getty Center or Getty Villa
3. Predoctoral Fellowships for PhD candidates at the Getty Center

This page provides information specific to Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships.

Applicants for 2024–2025

Application Timeline

Applications open on July 1, 2023 and close on October 2, 2023.

Annual Theme: Extinction (Getty Center)

Each application cycle has its own theme that addresses a consequential topic in the arts and humanities. The scholar cohort for that year carries out research projects that respond to this theme, which serves to bridge the various subfields and methodologies of those in residence and provides shared terrain for collaboration, connection, and exchange while also opening up new interdisciplinary conversations.

Extinction

The arts have the capacity to mitigate against cultural loss by visualizing, capturing, and interpreting aspects of the fleeting, the ephemeral, and the unrecoverable. In this moment of extreme environmental decay and monumental epidemic loss, the Getty Scholars Program invites applications on the pressing topic of extinction and its bearing on the visual arts and cultural heritage. Scholars are asked to contemplate how representational practices are deployed to cope with the precarious survival of plants, animals, and humans; the ever-present specter of species-level extinction and resource exhaustion; and, at the most extreme pole, the brutality of mass atrocity. On another level, atrophy, decay, and obsolescence constitute the temporal dimensions of certain artistic practices, especially as creative approaches, technologies, media, formats, and ideals become outmoded or superseded. The finality of disappearance may also portend a certain amount of hope for rebirth, innovation, or recovery.

This year’s theme welcomes research topics that explore that which is lost, but also the urgent impulse toward preservation and permanence. Beyond loss, destruction, or mortality, the topic also seeks to explore the creative and productive possibilities that extinction may enable.

Guiding Questions

• How have recent scientific or technological advances made it possible to visualize lost sites, beings, and objects?
• What new habitations and communities have emerged or survived from the processes and effects of extinction?
• Historians, archaeologists, and cultural heritage scholars work actively to preserve and protect certain categories of visual, material, and built culture. Yet there are cases in which obsolescence is warranted, even invited. What do we choose to save and why? Who decides upon the criteria and what is the logic?
• Many forms of human expression are not meant to endure, such as performance, storytelling, music, and dance. What is the relationship between artistic forms and cultural practices that have been lost and their more durable records and traces?
• The most devastating loss is that of entire cultures and groups, sometimes targets of intentional annihilation. How can precarious forms of indigenous knowledge and fragile cultural identities that are in danger of extinction be conveyed, preserved, and represented? How might communities challenge predictions and presumptions of extinction?

African American Art History Initiative (AAAHI) Fellowship (Getty Center)

In addition to the annual theme, grants are available under the AAAHI Fellowship. This residential program provides financial support and housing to scholars who are expanding critical inquiry of African American art and its frameworks. As part of the larger scholar year cohort, AAAHI Fellows have opportunities to present their research and receive feedback from an interdisciplinary group of peers. While proposals do not have to address the concurrent annual theme, they may highlight any salient intersections with it.

AAAHI will support two fellows to generate new knowledge in the expanding field of African American art history. Projects that propose engagement with Getty’s growing collections of archival and primary source material related to African American art history—particularly post-World War II—are welcome. However, relevance to Getty holdings is not a project requirement. We invite applications from scholars who focus on African American art and visual culture in all time periods and media and in a broad range of theoretical and methodological traditions. Applicants should indicate how their project would align with AAAHI's aim to make African American art history more visible to the public and accessible to the scholarly community worldwide.

Annual Theme: Anatolia: The Classical World in Context (Getty Villa)

Each application cycle has its own theme that addresses a consequential topic in the arts and humanities. The scholar cohort for that year carries out research projects that respond to this theme, which serves to bridge the various subfields and methodologies of those in residence and provides shared terrain for collaboration, connection, and exchange while also opening up new interdisciplinary conversations.

Anatolia: The Classical World in Context

The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will examine relations between the Greek cities of western Asia Minor and Anatolian civilizations from the 2nd millennium to the Roman Imperial period. In the Late Bronze Age, diplomatic ties linked the Hittite and Luwian kingdoms with the Mycenaeans at Miletos. During the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, the eastern Greeks were at the forefront of revolutionary advances in the arts, monumental architecture, poetry, philosophy, history, and the natural sciences. This "Ionian Enlightenment," however, culminated within a dynamic cultural and political setting alongside Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia, which had already emerged as regional powers over the previous two centuries. Subject to Persian rule after 547 BCE, Greek and Anatolian communities redefined their own identities until the conquest of Alexander the Great and the advent of Roman rule once again transformed the cultural landscapes of the entire region.

Grant Details

The following provides information about Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships. Visit the Getty Scholars Program or Getty Scholars Program at the Villa pages for details about grants for established researchers and professionals.

Eligibility

Applications for Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships are welcome from researchers of all nationalities who work in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

Current Getty staff and members of their immediate family are not eligible for Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships.

Predoctoral Fellowship applicants must have advanced to candidacy by the application deadline and should expect to complete their dissertations during the fellowship period.

Applicants who received their doctoral degree before September 1, 2020 should apply for a Scholar Grant at the Getty Center or Getty Villa.

Terms

Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellows are in residence for nine months from late September to late June. Predoctoral fellows may be in residence at the Getty Center, while Postdoctoral fellows may be in residence at the Getty Center or Getty Villa.

See the overview of the Getty Residential Scholar and Fellow Program for further details about stipends, housing, healthcare, and more.

• Getty Predoctoral Fellowship recipients receive a stipend of $30,000.
• Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship recipients receive a stipend of $35,000.

Application Process

How to Apply

Applicants need to complete and submit the online Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowship application form by the deadline, which requires the following attachments:

*Applicants for the AAAHI Fellowships are not required to work on the annual theme. Rather, they should describe how their projects will generate new knowledge in the expanding field of African American art history.

1. Project Proposal (not to exceed five pages, typed and double-spaced): Must include a description of the applicant's proposed plan of study. The description should indicate 1) how the project addresses the annual theme* and 2) how it would benefit from the resources at Getty, including its library and collections. Projects that propose to use the resources at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), including its library and collections, are encouraged. However, proposed projects are not required to be relevant to the holdings of the GRI.
2. Selected Bibliography
3. Doctoral Dissertation Plan or Abstract
4. Curriculum Vitae
5. Writing Sample
6. Confirmation letter of degree conferral or program standing
7. Two Letters of Recommendation: The application will prompt you to request two confidential letters of recommendation through the system. After providing the names and emails of your references, a link will be sent to them automatically that will allow them to upload their confidential recommendations. Recommenders should attach a scanned original letter to the email. Once you request this information, you will be able to monitor your account to confirm that the letters have been submitted.

Decision Notification

Applicants will be notified of their application outcome approximately six months after the deadline.

Contact

E-mail: researchgrants@getty.edu

Attn: Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellowships