The following list was developed initially by OutHistory intern Moira Armstrong (Rutgers University-Newark) in 2024. For corrections, updates, and additions, please write to outhistory@gmail.com.

Fellowships

Center for Lesbian And Gay Studies Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship

Description: The CLAGS Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship assists scholars and professionals whose research on the LGBTQ experience can benefit from access to CLAGS’s resources and its location in midtown Manhattan at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Eligibility: The Fellowship Program is open to all disciplines with projects that are related to LGBTQ studies. Creative writing (works of poetry and fiction) and projects that result in a performance are not eligible. Applicants finishing dissertation topics are welcome to apply

Deadline: June 1 for a September start date and October 1 for a January start date

Kinsey Institute Scholars of Sexology Fellowship

Description: The Scholars of Sexology Fellowship supports graduate students whose scholarly work would benefit from the use of library and archival materials at the Kinsey Institute. Fellows are also expected to contribute to the organization, preservation, and/or accessibility of Kinsey Institute collections.

Eligibility: Graduate students

Amount: $5,000

Deadline: No 2025 deadline announced as of December 2024.

Michigan State University Lesbian Legacies Endowed Research Fellowship

Description: Established by Purple, a group of Lansing friends who engage in community activism, the Lesbian Legacies: Amazon Cultural/Political Activism in the Second Wave Feminism Endowment provides $3,000 to support researchers working in the field of LGBTQ+ studies, including lesbian and gay movements.

Eligibility: Any researcher working on an academic, journalistic, or creative project, including undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, artists, activists, or independent researchers may apply, unless current or incoming MSU students. Applicants must be at least 50 miles from East Lansing. Open to applicants from all nationalities; non-U.S. citizens are required to obtain a J-1 visa if accepted.

Amount: $3,000

Deadline: February 1, 2025

New York Public Library Martin Duberman Visiting Fellowship

Description: The Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar program at The New York Public Library promotes excellence in LGBTQ studies by supporting scholars engaged in original, archivally-based research. They will be expected to utilize the LGBTQ collections at NYPL, though it is not expected they confine themselves to those collections.

Eligibility: The fellowship is open to established and emerging scholars, both academics and independent scholars.

Amount: $25,000

Deadline: No 2025 deadline announced as of December 2024.

OutHistory Fellowships

Description: The OutHistory Fellowship Program (OFP) is designed to support the presentation of high-quality LGBTQ+ historical exhibits on under-represented topics in North American LGBTQ history, including African Americans, Asian Americans, bisexuals, immigrants and refugees, incarcerated people, Latine people, lesbians, Muslims, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, people with disabilities, trans people, and pre-20th century history.

Amount: $1600

Deadline: January 1, 2025

Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellowship in Lesbian Studies

Description: The Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellowship in Lesbian Studies is a biennial dissertation-writing workshop for a cohort of doctoral fellows.

Eligibility: Applicants must be enrolled doctoral candidates who have completed coursework, qualifying exams, and submitted their dissertation prospectus (i.e., ABD status). Students studying or located in all geographical regions are welcome. Doctoral students enrolled at Yale University are ineligible to apply for the Fellowship. Students working on projects concerned with a range of genders, gender identities, sexualities, and sexual practices are invited to apply.

Deadline: No 2025 competition

University of Michigan Heidrich Research Fellowship

Description: The William P. Heidrich Visiting Research Fellowship is open to researchers whose work would benefit from onsite access to the Joseph A. Labadie Collection. This collection is one of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind. Its holdings include materials on anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, antiwar and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, labor and workers’ rights, LGBTQ movements, youth and student protest, and other related topics.

Eligibility: researchers with academic, journalistic, or creative project who live outside of a 100-mile radius of Ann Arbor, Michigan. No specific institutional or academic credentials required. Open to researchers of all nationalities. Non-U.S. citizens are required to obtain a J-1 visa if accepted.

Amount: $2,000 for a project requiring domestic travel or $3,000 for a project requiring international travel

Deadline: January 31, 2021

Yale University LGBT Studies Fellowship

Description: The  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Fellowship at Yale University is offered annually, and is designed to provide access to Yale resources in LGBT Studies for scholars who live outside the greater New Haven area.

Eligibility: Scholars from across the country and around the world are invited to apply for the Yale LGBT Studies Research Fellowship. This fellowship supports scholars from any field pursuing research in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer studies at Yale University, utilizing the vast faculty resources, manuscript archives, and library collections available at Yale. Graduate students conducting dissertation research, independent scholars, and all faculty are invited to apply. Scholars residing within 100 miles of New Haven are ineligible.

Amount: $4,000

Deadline: No 2025 deadline as of December 2024.

Grants

American Historical Association LGBTQ Research Grants

Description: The American Historical Association offers LGBTQ History Research Grants to support new and continuing research in LGBTQ history, available to scholars working in all temporal and geographic fields. Open to scholars at all career levels, this grant will especially serve graduate students and early career researchers working on LGBTQ history. Individual grants up to $500 will be awarded.

Eligibility: members of the AHA who have not received more than a combined total of $1,500 from all AHA research grants, with preference given to advanced doctoral students, nontenured faculty, and unaffiliated scholars, and to those with specific research needs, such as the completion of a project or a discrete segment thereof.

Amount: Up to $500

Deadline: February 15, 2025

Colorado State University Friedman Feminist Press Research Grant

Description:  The Friedman Feminist Press Collection research grants support projects with a focus on women and/or gender that make substantial use of the FFPC, including historical research and documentation projects resulting in dissertations, publications, exhibitions, educational initiatives, documentary films, or other multi-media works. A successful application will also include a connection to second-wave feminist topics with reference to specific holdings in the collection. Providing original sources in feminist/lesbian literature and second-wave feminism, the collection archives multi-genre works of fiction, poetry, memoir, and essay by feminist publishers of the 1970s and 80s that brought women and women’s words out into the world. This unique collection also includes materials related to the study of feminist publishing and second-wave feminism.

Eligibility: No restrictions

Amount: $1,800

Deadline: February 9, 2025

Cornell University Phil Zwickler Memorial Research Grants

Description: Since 2002, Cornell University Library has been able to offer select scholars financial assistance for expenses incurred when they come to conduct research on sexuality with sources in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC). Zwickler, a filmmaker and journalist who devoted his talents to communicating ideas about lesbian and gay rights and the AIDS crisis, died in 1991 at age 36.

Eligibility: Any researcher with a project that can be augmented by research with the Human Sexuality Collection and related sources is eligible to apply. Preference is given to projects that have a high probability of publication or other public dissemination. We invite applications from playwrights and other artists.

Amount: Up to $1,500

Deadline: May 31, 2025

Duke University Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Travel Grants

Description: These grants are named in honor of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and are intended to support research using the Sallie Bingham Center's collection of the Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Papers.  In addition to supporting academic research aimed at producing publications and dissertations, these grants will support a wide range of other creative projects such as educational initiatives, exhibitions, films, multimedia products, and other artistic works. Eligibility: Rubenstein Library travel grants are meant to support travel to the library to view materials in-person.  Anyone who wishes to use materials from the designated collections for research may apply, including, but not limited to students at any level of education; faculty members; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers. All applicants must be over the age of 18; reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C.; and may not be current Duke students or employees.

Amount: Up to $1,500

Deadline: February 28, 2025

Duke University Harry Harkins Jr. Travel Grants

Description: The Harry H. Harkins, Jr. T'73 Travel Grant is offered in support of researchers whose work would benefit from access to the Rubenstein Library's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) history collections. These grants are named in honor of Harry H. Harkins, Jr. T'73 for his generous support of this program and in recognition of his ongoing support for LGBTQ history and sexuality studies collections for Duke University Libraries.

Eligibility: Rubenstein Library travel grants are meant to support travel to the library to view materials in-person.  Anyone who wishes to use materials from the designated collections for research may apply, including, but not limited to students at any level of education; faculty members; visual and performing artists; writers; filmmakers; public historians; and independent researchers. All applicants must be over the age of 18; reside beyond a 100-mile radius of Durham, N.C.; and may not be current Duke students or employees.

Amount: Up to $1,500

Deadline: February 28, 2025

Estelle Freedman Travel Award

Description: The Estelle Freedman Award is a research travel award given out by the CLGBTH for scholars applying feminist analysis to LBGTQ history, from any historical time period or region. The award is named in honor of Estelle Freedman, a pathbreaking historian in US women’s history and feminist studies. Professor Freedman taught at Stanford from 1976 to 2021, where she cofounded the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her prolific scholarship includes prison reform, lesbian history, and the politics of sexuality.

Eligibility: Anyone is welcome to apply for the Estelle Freedman Award, but priority to graduate students and early career scholars with the greatest financial need.

Amount: Up to $1,000

Deadline: No 2025 deadline available as of December 2024.

Gay and Lesbian Review Charles S. Longcope Jr. Artists and Writers Grant

Description: The Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide, with the generous support of James Lynn Williams in honor of his late husband, Charles S. Longcope Jr. (previously funded by the Leonard-Litz Foundation), has created a writers and artists grant program to cultivate a diverse pool of writers for The G&LR to bring new perspectives, ideas, and voices to the magazine and to encourage and support emerging and unpublished  LGBTQ+ writers, thinkers, scholars, and artists. We are currently accepting proposals from graduate students across disciplines and fields that make a contribution to LGBTQ+ scholarship or the arts.

Eligibility: Students who are enrolled in an accredited graduate school program whose proposed project makes a contribution to LGBTQ+ scholarship or the arts are eligible to apply. Multi-author applications and international applicants are welcome.

Amount: Up to $7,500

Deadline: January 31, 2025

LGBTQ-RAN Educational Resource Prize

Description: To further the teaching and instruction of LGBTQ+ history in various classroom contexts, the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network offers this annual LGBTQ-RAN Educational Resource Prize. Inaugurated in 2021, the prize honors scholars and teachers developing curricular and instructional materials for the teaching of LGBTQ+ religious history at all levels of education from primary to higher education, as well as in congregational or community settings.  A key purpose of this prize is to support and amplify the development of these educational resources and to make excellent resources available to the public by publishing them (with authors’ permission and with acknowledgement and citation) on the LGBTQ-RAN website in order to amplify awareness about the important contribution of the LGBTQ+ community to religious history. 

Eligibility: curriculum materials or instructional materials created by any person interested in LGBTQ+ religious history and the teaching of it in diverse contexts

Amount: $500

Deadline: June 30, 2025

Schlesinger Library Dissertation Grants

Description: The Schlesinger Library invites predoctoral scholars whose dissertation research requires use of the library's collections to apply for research support.

Eligibility: Applicants must have advanced to candidacy in a doctoral program in a relevant field and have an approved dissertation topic. Priority will be given to those whose projects require use of materials available only at the Schlesinger Library.

Amount: Up to $3,000

Deadline: January 26, 2025

Schlesinger Library Research Support Grants

Description: The Schlesinger Library invites scholars and other serious researchers at any career stage beyond graduate school to apply for support for their work in our collections.

Eligibility: Applicants must have a doctoral degree or equivalent research and writing experience. Priority will be given to those who have demonstrated research productivity and whose projects require use of materials available only at the Schlesinger Library.

Amount: Up to $3,000

Deadline: January 28, 2025

Schlesinger Library Teacher Support Grants

Description: The Schlesinger Library invites secondary school teachers to apply for support for research in our collections connected to their work in the classroom.

Eligibility: Priority will be given to those who have demonstrated innovative pedagogy in social studies and history, and whose proposals make a compelling case about the ways materials available only at the Schlesinger Library will be incorporated into the applicant’s curriculum plans.

Amount: Up to $3,000

Deadline: January 26, 2025

Project Funding

Queer Pasts Project Funding

Description: Queer Pasts is a collection of primary source exhibits for students and scholars of queer history and culture, curated by academic editors Marc Stein and Lisa Arellano. The database, which is published by Alexander Street/ProQuest/Clarivate, uses “queer” in its broadest and most inclusive sense, embracing LGBT topics as well as other sexual and gender formations that are queer. Particular focus is given to perspectives from people of color, trans people and people with disabilities.

Amount: $1,000

Deadline: Proposals may be submitted anytime.

Prizes

Allan Bérubé Prize

Description: The Allan Bérubé Prize recognizes outstanding work in public or community-based lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer history.

Eligibility: Open in even-numbered years

Amount: $200

Deadline: No 2026 deadline announced as of December 2024.

Audre Lorde Prize

Description: The Audre Lorde Prize recognizes an outstanding article on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, and/or queer history published in English.

Eligibility: Open in even-numbered years

Amount: $200

Deadline: No 2026 deadline announced as of December 2024.

Don Romesburg Prize

Description: The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH) will award the Don Romesburg Prize for outstanding K-12 curriculum in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer history.

Eligibility: Open in odd-numbered years

Amount: $200

Deadline: No 2025 deadline announced as of December 2024.

Gregory Sprague Prize

Description: The Gregory Sprague Prize recognizes an outstanding published or unpublished paper, article, book chapter, or dissertation chapter on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, and/or queer history completed in English by a graduate student.

Eligibility: Graduate students, open in even-numbered years

Amount: $200

Deadline: No 2025 deadline announced as of December 2024.

Joan Nestle Prize

Description: The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH) will award the Joan Nestle Prize for an outstanding paper on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer history completed in English by an undergraduate student.

Eligibility: Undergraduate student, open in odd-numbered years

Amount: $200

Deadline: No 2026 deadline announced as of December 2024.

John Boswell Prize

Description: The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH) will award the John Boswell Prize for an outstanding book on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer history published in English.

Eligibility: Open in odd-numbered years

Amount: $200

Deadline: No 2025 deadline announced as of December 2024.

John D’Emilio Dissertation Award

Description: The John D’Emilio LGBTQ History Dissertation Award is given annually by the Organization of American Historians to the best PhD dissertation in US LGBTQ history. The award is named for John D’Emilio, a pioneer in LGBTQ history.

Deadline: No 2025 deadline announced as of December 2024.

Ruth Benedict Prize

Description: The Ruth Benedict Prize is presented each year at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting to acknowledge excellence in a scholarly book written from an anthropological perspective about a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender topic. The Ruth Benedict Prize is awarded in each of two separate categories: one for a single-authored monograph and another for an edited volume. Submissions may be on any topic related to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, or other gender / sexual formations and categories from any world culture area. Topics may include the study of normativity, queer theory, and the social/historical construction of sexual and gender identities, discourses and categories. Authors may represent any scholarly discipline, but the material submitted must engage anthropological theories and methods.

Deadline: No 2025 deadline announced as of December 2024.

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award

Description: To encourage and support original research and study of LGBTQ religious history, LGBTQ-RAN offers an annual award for papers, the Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award. Initiated in 2005, this award honors outstanding scholarship in LGBTQ religious history from among an array of academic papers submitted. The Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award is the only award offered in this academic arena.

Eligibility: original historical research papers in English from all scholars in the field

Amount: $1,000

Deadline: December 1, 2025