Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study - Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program

Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program

Radcliffe Institute fellowships are designed to support scholars, scientists, artists, and writers of exceptional promise and demonstrated accomplishments who wish to pursue work in academic and professional fields and in the creative arts.

The Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program was founded at Radcliffe College in 1960 as the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study. In 1978 the Institute was renamed the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute to honor Radcliffe College President Mary Bunting whose initiative it was to create a postgraduate study center for female scholars and artists. Concerned about the prevailing "climate of unexpectation" for women at that time, Bunting deliberately sought to reverse that negative attitude by establishing the essential gifts of an Institute fellowship: time, financial support, a room of one's own, membership in a vital community of women, and access to all Radcliffe and Harvard resources.

Once Bunting’s idea was made public and the announcement appeared on the front page of the New York Times in the fall of 1960, more than 2,000 women inquired about the "experiment." The outpouring of interest confirmed President Bunting's hunch—that a growing number of educated women were ready to resume intellectual or artistic work after raising families.

Since 1960, more than 1,300 scholars, scientists, artists, writers, and musicians have been named fellows. The Boston Globe Magazine called the Bunting Institute "America's Think Tank for Women," and the Chronicle of Higher Education described the Institute as a place where "lives get turned around, books get written, and discoveries are made, all the result of time spent among intellectual peers."

In addition, research clusters at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study use the Radcliffe Fellowship Program to draw together scholars to focus on particular themes. Previous cluster topics include unconscious prejudice and the law, immigration, randomness and computation, and cosmology and theoretical astrophysics.