January 10, 2018—The American Academy in Berlin has been awarded a grant of $1.4 million from the New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This grant will establish the new Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, which will fund two residential fellows per academic year for an initial period of three years.

The projects of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellows in the Humanities will focus on key themes the American Academy has identified for transatlantic exploration: migration and integration, race in comparative perspective, and exile and return. To this end, the grant also covers a biannual workshop for scholars based in both the US and Germany, to be convened at the American Academy in Berlin by the Mellon Fellow at the conclusion of his or her fellowship. The initial two Andrew W. Mellon Fellows in the Humanities will be selected this winter for residential fellowships at the American Academy’s Hans Arnhold Center in the academic year 2018-2019. The first fellow will arrive in Berlin in September 2018 for the fall semester, the second in January 2019 for the spring semester.

“Given the current challenges to the transatlantic relationship, we are especially honored by the Mellon Foundation’s support of the American Academy in Berlin’s fellowship program, which fosters intellectual exchange between the United States and Germany,” said Academy president Michael P. Steinberg. “The foundation’s funding of this new fellowship underscores our shared commitment to vigorous transatlantic scholarship and recognizes the American Academy in Berlin’s ongoing contribution to American arts and letters.”

The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities joins seven annually supported fellowships at the American Academy in Berlin, which are funded by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation and the descendants of Hans and Ludmilla Arnhold, the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Axel Springer AG, Siemens AG, and Inga Maren Otto. Endowed fellowships at the Academy are the Daimler Fellowship, Dirk Ippen Fellowship, Holtzbrinck Fellowship, John P. Birkelund Fellowship in the Humanities, Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellowship in Fiction, and Nina Maria Gorrissen Fellowship in History.

About the Mellon Foundation

Founded in 1969, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies by supporting exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work.  Additional information is available at mellon.org.