Important Updates on Eligibility Changes and New Programs in Public Anthropology

Dear Colleagues,

As we promised last summer, we have been looking for opportunities to support public anthropology within our existing programs. We are also continuing to search for ways to best support the field in these times of existential threat. By reducing our investment in some programs, we’ll be able to increase our investment in others, strategically prioritizing areas that are essential to the field and its future. After careful consideration, we have made substantial changes to our existing programs and eligibility requirements to narrow our focus while expanding anthropology’s reach.

These were difficult decisions to make. In two years, we have seen a 76 percent rise in the number of research grant applications. We have also seen an assault on anthropology’s standing as an academic discipline.

We evaluated our programs on the basis of our mission, paying close heed to individuals and areas of research that are most precarious in the current moment, while leaning into initiatives that will help anthropologists demonstrate the value of their work to broad audiences. With this will come a renewed emphasis on anthropology, the field that we were founded to support.

Here are the changes that are coming in 2026–2027.

1. We are raising the stipend for the Fellowship in Anthropology and Black Experiences to $80,000 for the nine-month fellowship period.
2. We are discontinuing the Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship in its current form. In its place, we will be awarding one Hunt Fellowship in Public Writing per year. This fellowship will support anthropologists writing books for popular audiences. The stipend for the Hunt Fellowship in Public Writing is $80,000 for the nine-month fellowship period.
3. We are extending the scope of the Fejos Fellowship to support a broader range of media projects and raising the stipend to $80,000 for the nine-month fellowship period. With this comes a new name: the Fejos Fellowship in Public Media.
4. Applicants will only be eligible to apply once a year to any of our programs, and declined applicants are only permitted to resubmit their proposal once. (We will allow applicants who have already applied to our programs one more resubmission, no matter how many times they have already applied.)
5. We will continue to offer two deadlines for both the Dissertation Fieldwork Grants (May 1 and November 1) and the Conference and Workshop Grants (June 1 and December 1). However, new applicants must choose between the deadlines each calendar year; that is, they will not have an opportunity to apply to the same program at two consecutive deadlines. Across all our programs, applicants may not have more than one submission under consideration at the same time.

6. We will be offering only one deadline per calendar year for the Post-PhD Research Grants: May 1.
7. We are clarifying our eligibility requirements to require all applicants to have a stronger connection to anthropology. In addition to existing eligibility requirements for each program, we will only accept applications from (1) scholars pursuing a doctoral degree in anthropology, (2) scholars pursuing a doctoral degree in a related field who are affiliated with anthropology by way of their advisors and/or prior degrees, (3) scholars holding a PhD in anthropology, and (4) scholars in in related fields who have a current academic appointment in anthropology. We consider anthropology to include socio-cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology, and archeology, or their equivalent in countries where these fields are named differently. Please see specific programs for further information on eligibility.

We are excited by the excellent work we will support through the Hunt Fellowship in Public Writing and the Fejos Fellowship in Public Media, along with the Global Initiatives Grant, which now funds ambitious projects in public anthropology. But these programs won’t stand alone. We have adjusted our application questions to encourage all our applicants to think seriously about the publics that anthropology should and can reach.

We will begin enforcing these new policies for applications whose deadlines fall after August 1, 2026. On August 20, we will be holding a webinar to answer any questions you have about these changes; please keep an eye out for the announcement. In the meantime, thank you for your attention and understanding. We are committed to doing the work of supporting the field in these difficult times.

Best,

Danilyn Rutherford, President