Application Deadline: November 1, 2024.
About the fellowship
About dr. lemelson
The SPA/Robert Lemelson Foundation Fellowships are designed to provide graduate students working in the field of psychological anthropology with funding to pursue exploratory research for planning their doctoral dissertation research and /or methods training to prepare for their doctoral dissertation research. Research projects supported by the funding should have the potential of advancing the field of psychological anthropology.
Normally, fellows receive their awards after their first or second year of graduate training as they begin to develop their dissertation research projects. Proposed exploratory projects are evaluated for viability and the potential of resulting in future dissertation research that will advance the field of psychological anthropology. Preference is given to applicants conducting exploratory research abroad. We expect to award six or more fellowships (depending upon funding levels) in 2025 with each fellow expected to receive between $3,000 and $6,000 depending upon need.
Dr. Robert Lemelson
Dr. Robert Lemelson, Ph.D., is an anthropologist who received his M.A. from the University of Chicago, and his doctorate from the UCLA Department of Anthropology. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. He is also the president and founder of The Foundation for Psychocultural Research, a non-profit research foundation supporting research and training in the neurosciences and social sciences, and the director of Elemental Productions, a ethnographic documentary film production company. In addition, he is a director of the Lemelson Foundation, a family foundation supporting invention and innovation for basic human needs and sustainable development in the United States and the developing world.
As a practitioner and strong advocate of psychological anthropology, Dr. Lemelson personally began the SPA/Lemelson student fellowship and conference funds programs in 2007 to encourage graduate student fieldwork in psychological anthropology and to support faculty conference gatherings meant to stimulate innovative and creative thinking in psychological anthropology. Through these programs, numerous graduate students have been enabled to establish field sites for themselves and several collections of scholars have been encouraged to meet, exchange ideas, and push the boundaries and frontiers of both theory and practice in psychological anthropology.
Application Form:
Application Instructions:
ELIGIBILITY
- Fellowships are open to all graduate students without regard to citizenship or place of residence.
- Applicants must be enrolled in a graduate program at the time of application and during the period of the fellowship. Applicants’ proposed research must be in the field of psychological anthropology, broadly defined, but they do not need to be students in Departments of Anthropology.
- Applicants cannot have completed more than four years of graduate education, including all institutions that they have attended.
- Applicants must be current members of the Society of Psychological Anthropology (SPA), a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) as of Friday, November 1, 2024. Details on joining the AAA and the SPA can be found at https://spa.americananthro.org/join-spa/. (Note: If the applicant is not a current member, we suggest submitting the membership application well in advance to be sure that the membership is current by the deadline.)
- The funding cannot be used to collect data for the fellow’s master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation. This funding is explicitly for exploratory research to plan doctoral dissertation research, not for collection of data for broader projects.
- Funding is typically for summer research and will fund research conducted prior to September 1, 2025.
- Funding will be administered through fellows’ academic institutions.
- Fellows are required to disclose additional funding that they have received, applied for, or plan to apply for to support their proposed research project (see required RLF Fellowship application form). In cases where awardees secure funding additional to the Robert Lemelson Foundation fellowship, they are strictly prohibited from using RLF fellowship funds to cover expenses that are already covered by other funding mechanisms. Fellows may use Robert Lemelson Foundation fellowship funds only for expenses that are not covered by those additional funding mechanisms.
- All fellows are required to attend the 2025 AAA SPA Biennial Meeting in Santa Ana Pueblo, NM (April 3-6, 2025).
PERMISSIBLE USES OF ROBERT LEMELSON FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP FUNDING
-Funding is typically for summer research and will fund research conducted prior to September 1, 2025. Financial support can be requested to support all travel expenses, including airfare, ground transportation, and visa application fees; living expenses and housing; fieldwork expenses such as gifts for participants, translator and field assistant fees; and all other reasonable and justified expenses. Funds may not be used to pay for graduate school tuition or durable equipment, such as computers, cameras, or digital voice recorders. Budgets must include financial support up to a maximum of $800 to attend 2025 SPA Biennial Meeting.
-Funding cannot be used to support language training in more commonly taught languages, such as Spanish, French and Arabic. Some funding can be used to support language instruction for languages where formal instruction is limited, but the focus of the project should be on pursuing exploratory research rather than strictly language instruction. Funding can be used for methods training, but the methods in question must be tied directly to the exploratory research project and it will be this project that is the focus of the selection committee’s review. Proposals for general methods or statistical training, for example, are unlikely to be funded.
-We expect to fund proposals between $3,000 and $6,000. You may request a larger amount than the stated limit, but it is very unlikely that an award over $6,000 will be made.
APPLICATION COMPONENTS
This application will include 5 total components, 4 to be submitted by the applicant, and 1 by their recommender. The 4 components submitted by the applicant should all be combined within a single PDF file with your last name followed by RLF 2025, i.e. “Smith_RLF 2025.”
- Application form: Download the fellowship application form located at the top of this webpage, complete the form using Adobe Acrobat or Reader.
- Project statement: In 750 – 1,000 words (excluding references), please describe the specific research activities or training that you will carry out with support from the SPA/Robert Lemelson Foundation Fellowship. Explain your research aims and activities, including any preliminary data you will collect and analyses you are considering. Please specify the ways in which this preliminary research and/or methods training has the potential to make your dissertation research more successful. Please indicate whether you have ever spent time in the field site in question. If so, please indicate the length of time and experience you have there, and how this period of research will be different from previous visits. Your proposal should specifically address how your research program has the potential to advance the field of psychological anthropology. The statement should be single-spaced and use a 12-point font and one-inch margins on all sides. Any references included should be narrowly focused and should not exceed 300 words.
- Brief curriculum vitae: In one single-spaced page, provide details on your education with dates of enrollment; any research funding, fellowships, and awards you may have received, including amounts and dates, and any academic publications and presentations you may have completed. Include details on prior employment, volunteer work, and other experience only if it is directly relevant to the proposed research. Other information, such as teaching experience, should not be included.
- Budget and budget justification: In one single-spaced page, provide a detailed and specific budget with justification for the items and amounts included. Justification should include mention of how costs were estimated. Your budget must include support up to $800 for attendance at either the 2025 SPA Biennial meeting, and this amount can be listed as a single item in your budget.
In addition, your application must also include a letter of recommendation sent directly from your recommender:
- Letter of recommendation: Applicants must obtain a letter written in support of their application from a faculty member familiar with their work and research aspirations. Normally, this will be the chair of the student’s graduate research advisory committee. Please provide the attached information sheet (see below) to the individual who is writing the letter. It is the applicant’s responsibility to be sure that the letter is received by the deadline. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. Only one letter of recommendation will be accepted.
As you prepare your application materials, we encourage you to become familiar with your institution’s Institutional Review Board requirements for your research and to begin preparing your IRB protocol. Planning ahead in this way will help to ensure that, if your proposed research is funded, you will not experience delays with beginning your fieldwork.
DEADLINE AND SUBMISSION DETAILS
Deadline for application submission: November 1, 2024.
Your application should consist of a single combined PDF file that contains all four components from the applicant, as described above. Please label the PDF with your last name followed by RLF 2025, i.e. “Smith_RLF 2025.”
To submit your application, please send the file as an attachment to the SPA Secretary, Bridget M. Haas (bmh7@case.edu) by the deadline. Applications received after this time and date will not be reviewed.
We expect to contact awardees by mid-January 2025. Please contact SPA Secretary, Bridget M. Haas (bmh7@case.edu) with questions or if there are any changes to your application after you submit, such as receipt of other funding.
Past SPA/RLF Fellowship Award Recipients
2023
Suraiya Luecke
UCLA
Yang Liu
Southern Methodist University
Daniel Kennedy
UCLA
There’s No Place Like Home: Imagining Care, Community, and Possibility with Unhoused Kansans
Emily Bailey
Columbia University
Dynamic Frame Building and Communitas in Autistic Workplaces: A search for field sites
Uma Blanchard
The University of Chicago
Outside in the City: Youth Subjectivity and Trajectories at an Urban Adventure Therapy Program
Robin Yzelman
Washington University
Exploring therapeutic and environmental processes with Andean-Amazonian healers in Bolivia
Tianyi Bai
Boston University
Expecting Transgender Futures: Uncertain Lives with Gender Transgressing in Guangzhou, China
2022
Mir Fatimah Kanth
UC San Diego
Charm Offensive: Counterinsurgencey, Youth and Everyday Life in Kashmir
Paras Arora
Stanford University
A Home Away from Home: Familial & Institutional Care for Autistic Adults in India
2020/2021
Ziqi Xie
Boston University
Women’s Moral Reasoning and Moral Acts in the Face of China’s Child Policy Shift
Breanne Casper
University of South Florida
Cues, Cognition, and Culture: Examining Contexts of Substance Use Cessation in Costa Rica
Kim Youjoung
John Hopkins University
COVID-19 Government Measures and Everyday Life of People on Jeju Island, South Korea
Talia Katz
John Hopkins University
Healing in the As-If: Political Subjectivity and the Aesthetics of Pain in Israeli Psychodrama
2019
Sanaullah Khan
John Hopkins University
Militarizing the Psyche: Kinship, Mental illness and the State in Pakistan
Florin Cristea
Free University of Berlin
Affective Minds: “Madness”, Morality, and Emotions in Rural Bali
Julio Villa-Palomino
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Deinstitutionalization Unfolding: The Transition to Community Mental Health in Lima, Peru
2018
Zoe Berman
University of Chicago
On the “Post-Genocide Generation”: Intergenerational memories and Psychosomatic Distress in Contemporary Rwanda
Mary Cook
University of Chicago
Denying Refuge: Psychocultural Perspectives on Anti-immigration Activism in Belfast
Raffaella Seymour
University of Chicago
Being Gay and Pentecostal: Conflicted Moral Selfhood in Zimbabwe
Mengqing Shang
Boston University
Where the East Meets the West: The interaction of Buddhism and Western Psychotherapeutics in China’s Psycho-Boom
2017
Reem Mehdoui
UCLA
Tunisian Youth, Revolution, and Articulation of Morality in Times of Crisis
Alexia Arani
UCSD
Queering Care: Caring Positivities: Caring Subjectivities Among Queer and Trans People of Color in a Post-Obama United States
Sara Rendell
University of Pennsylvania
Finding Footing on Shifting Terrain: Ethnography of Migrant Cartographies
Emily Wilson
University of Chicago
Intimacy for Hire: Sensorial Care in the American Gig Economy
Lauren Nippoldt
UCSD
Navigating Moral Experiences with Care: Discussing Motivation and Wellbeing among Care Workers in Chandigarh, India
Paula Martin
University of Chicago
Our Bodies Are Not Our Selves: Situating the Discourse of Gender Identity in the US
2016
Alexis Howard
The University of Chicago
Lauren Cubellis
Washington University at St. Louis
Yael Assor
UCLA
Ellen Kozelka
UCSD
Anisha Chadha
New York University
Seamus Power
The University of Chicago
Beth Semel
MIT
2015
Danielle Carr
University of Minnesota
Devin Flaherty
UCLA
Ting Hai Lau
Cornell University
Emily Lucitt
UCLA
Jessica McCauley
Washington University Pullman
Noha Roushdy
Boston University
Tyler Zoanni
NYU
2014
David A. Ansari
The University of Chicago
Jessica Cooper
Princeton University
Laura Horton
The University of Chicago
Afshan Kamrudin
SMU
Kelsey Robbins
The University of Chicago
2013
William Hartmann
University of Michigan
Werner B. Hertzog
Vanderbilt University
Robert M. Loomis
The University of Chicago
Aidan Seale Feldman
UCLA
Jessica Ham
University of Georgia
Jenn Lindsay
Boston University
Ashley Morris
University of Hawaii
Arielle Wright
Washington University in St. Louis
2012
Michael Chladek
The University of Chicago
Lindsey Conklin
The University of Chicago
Nofit Itzhak
UCSD
Erin Moore
The University of Chicago
Kristi Ninneman
Case Western University
Caissa Revilla-Minaya
Vanderbilt University
Jenny Walkton-Wetszel
UCLA