Funding

University Funding for PhD Students

All newly enrolled students are provided guaranteed funding that includes a full-tuition scholarship, health insurance (for the student only), coverage of the Graduate Student Services Fee, and a living stipend for the duration of their enrollment in the PhD program. The Division of the Social Sciences manages the funding packages for history PhD students. Information on the funding provided by the University can be found on the Division's website. 

Research and Writing Funds

Our students are extremely successful in securing fellowships from the Department, the University, and outside agencies to support their later years of dissertation research and writing.

Departmental Funding

The Department of History’s graduate student grants are funded by gifts from the Freehling, Kunstadter, and Sinkler families, and in honor of Profs. Eric Cochrane, T. Bentley Duncan, John Hope Franklin, Arthur Mann, William H. McNeill. History’s Fellowships Committee awards the grants.

Department funds for Pre-Dissertation and Dissertation Research

The Department holds two travel grant competitions per year, one in Autumn Quarter and one in early Spring Quarter. Research travel grants are competitive. Students are eligible for up to $8,000 in research grants over their graduate career. They are eligible for up to $3,000 in one award cycle. There are two types of travel grants available. 

Research I Travel Grants
These are small grants to help students defray the costs of researching early career work. Students are eligible to apply in Autumn Quarter of their first year through Autumn Quarter of their second year.

Research II Travel Grants
These are small grants to help students defray the costs of researching the proposal or dissertation. Students are eligible to apply beginning in Spring Quarter of their second year.

Department funds for Conference Travel

Students also have access to funding to support presentations and attendance at academic conferences. 

Conference Presentation Funding
History graduate students are eligible for funding to present a paper at a recognized academic conference. Students may request funding for up to $2000 over the course of their career and with an annual cap of $1000 for multiple conferences. In consultation with advisors, students decide at which stage to seek reimbursement. Some common configurations include two conferences in a single year prior to orals to gain rhetoric skill, after the proposal to seek responses to a topic's argument or direction, or before entering the job market for professional development.

Professional Conference Attendance
History graduate students are eligible to receive up to $300 for travel to a recognized conference with the intention of interviewing while on the job market. The professional conference grant may only be used once during a graduate career. Students should be strategic about when and how to use the grant if they must travel to multiple professional conferences or may be on the job market for more than one year.

Department Special Project Grants

Further funding for language training, paleography, and other special cases is available. Awards are distributed by the Fellowships Committee and depend on the quality of the request as well as the availability of funds. 

Other Funding Opportunities

Area Center Funding

• Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS-Title VI)—Administers academic year (at Chicago) and summer (at Chicago or US or international institutions) grants; open to US citizens or permanent residents; contingent upon funding from the US Department of Education
• Center for East Asian Studies—Area center for FLAS fellowships in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean; trave and dissertation-research fellowships, digitatization project funding and project grants.
• Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies—Area center for FLAS fellowships in Armenian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Turkish, and Uzbek
• Center for Latin American Studies—Area center, teaching opportunities, dissertation research grants
• Center for Middle Eastern Studies—Area center for FLAS fellowships in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, and Uzbek; summer language travel
• South Asia at Chicago—Area center for FLAS and other language fellowships in Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, and Urdu; travel, dissertation-research, and conference grants.

Supplementary Funding

• Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality—Teaching opportunities, residential and dissertation research fellowships
• Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture—Teaching opportunities, travel, residential, dissertation-research, and dissertation completion fellowships.
• Division of the Social Sciences—Dissertation completion fellowships.
• France Chicago Center—Language study in France, travel and scholarly exchange grants
• Fulbright IIE and Fulbright-Hays—Research fellowships for US citizens
• Georges Lurcy Charitable Trust—Dissertation research in France
• Nicholson Center for British Studies—Short and long-term fellowships for archival research in the British Isles, regardless of field of study
• UChicago GRAD—Clearing house for graduate fellowship opportunities

Further funding can be acquired through research assistantships and federal work study.

Research Assistantships

History students and students in other programs are welcome to apply. The Department of History puts out a call for applications for research assistantships in late summer or early autumn. Students and faculty are matched as well as possible, based on research interests and foreign language skills. The Department considers students with Federal Work-Study money first.

Federal Work-study

Federal Work-Study provides funds outright to eligible students who work at the University. As determined by government criteria, an eligible student is a US citizen or permanent resident who is generally from a family of modest means or is "independent" (not claimed as a dependent on parents' Federal income tax form). Contact Graduate Financial Aid at (773) 702-6061 or review the Federal Work-Study page for questions about the program eligibility and how to apply.