Limited Submission Opportunity 

Mellon Foundation 2025 New Directions Fellowship   

Slot(s): 1 faculty 

Internal Deadline: November 3, 2025 

Application Deadline: December 11, 2025 

The Award & Eligibility Criteria 

Mellon’s Higher Learning program is to elevate the knowledge that informs fuller narratives of the human experience. Supporting the expansion and evolution of humanities disciplines through investing in the range and productivity of exceptional faculty is crucial to this objective. New Directions Fellows undertake systematic training outside their fields of specialization to acquire the competencies required for advanced cross-disciplinary research—research that goes beyond traditional boundaries and offers innovative and effective ways of bringing humanistic knowledge to bear on societal challenges. With this objective in view, we invite nominations of scholars in the humanities or humanistic social sciences who received their doctorates between 2013 and 2019 and whose research interests call for formal training in a discipline other than the one in which they are an expert. The proposed field of study must be a foray into a new area of intellectual inquiry and not just an enhancement to go further in the primary field. Language study, technical training, or skills acquisition such as GIS mapping do not, by themselves, constitute a new direction.  Please review the Fellowship guidelines for detailed information about this program. This competition will provide grants of up to $300,000 over three years. 

Guidance for the Nomination Process 

An internal competition will be held to assign the SLU slot.  

1. Please upload a Short (max 5-pages) CV 

2. Project Summary: Please summarize your proposal in no more than 200 words. (Approximately 1,300 characters with spaces). 

3. Project Description and Significance: Please provide an explanation of the overall significance of the research being undertaken and how the proposed new direction will assist in the development of the field. (Field limited to approximately 2,000 words; maximum of 13,000 characters with spaces). 

Applicant documents submit in OpenWater by 5pm on November 3, 2025, here: https://slu.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/226/home

A SLU faculty selection committee will review and select the most suitable applicant and notify all applicants of the outcome by November 21, 2025, barring any unforeseen circumstances. If selected, the program application deadline is 3 pm ET on December 11, 2025.   

Please contact Christine Luebbert, OVPR program manager, christine.luebbert@slu.edu with questions about the SLU nomination process.