Purpose

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The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.

Since the first round of competition in 1981, more than 1,200 Newcombe Fellows have been named. Fellows from early years of the program are now senior faculty members at major research universities and selective liberal arts colleges, curators and directors at significant scholarly archives, and leaders and policymakers at nonprofit organizations and in cabinet-level government agencies. In the past decade, national honors such as the MacArthur Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize in History, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences have been accorded to more than a dozen Newcombe Fellows—a number that will continue to grow as more and more Fellows enter the most productive phases of their careers.