We're excited to announce that three UC Davis doctoral students – Victor Chimaway Lopez (Native American Studies), Stephen Eyman (Linguistics), and David Morales (History) – have been selected as 2024 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellows! The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) launched the program in 2023 with the support of the Mellon Foundation to advance a vision for doctoral education that prioritizes openness to new methods and sources, underrepresented voices and perspectives, and scholarly experimentation. The awards are designed to accelerate change in the norms of humanistic scholarship by recognizing those who take risks in the modes, methods, and subjects of their research. 

The ACLS used a rigorous, interdisciplinary peer review process to select the fellows, who represent a diverse range of research topics. Our scholars were chosen from a competitive pool of over 700 applicants from 125 U.S. universities, reflecting the prestige of this honor. 

Each fellow receives an award of up to $50,000, consisting of a $40,000 stipend for the fellowship year; up to $8,000 for project-related research, training, professional development, and travel expenses; and a $2,000 stipend to support external mentorship that offers new perspectives on the fellow’s project and expands their advising network. With fellows pursuing their research across the country and beyond, ACLS will also provide opportunities for virtual networking and scholarly programming throughout the fellows’ award terms. 

Congratulations to Victor, Stephen and David on this remarkable achievement!