About the Fellowship

The Kluge Fellowship in Digital Studies provides an opportunity for scholars to utilize digital methods, the Library’s large and varied digital collections and resources, curatorial expertise, and an emerging community of digital scholarship practitioners. Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research is particularly welcome in the Kluge Digital Studies program. The fellowship is open to scholars from all disciplines. The Digital Studies Fellowship supports a wide array of academic work that encompasses digital scholarship, digital humanities, data science, data analysis, data visualization, and digital publishing that utilize digital collections, tools, and methods. Fellows will have the opportunity to engage with various digital departments in the Library of Congress while pursing and sharing their research.

Application and Selection

The Library's John W. Kluge Center seeks proposals from scholars worldwide that will generate deep, empirically-grounded understanding of the consequences of the digital revolution on how people think, how society functions, and how international relations shift. Proposals may also explore and analyze emerging trends and new phenomena that may generate consequential changes in the future. All proposals must state the importance of the research to fundamental thinking about the human condition.

Scholars should include a discussion of how the resources of the Library of Congress will inform the intended research. Resources at the Library of Congress include:

• The National Digital Library (loc.gov/collections) with more than 30 million online documents in support of the study of the history and culture of the United States available via an Application Programming Interface (API) at https://libraryofcongress.github.io/data-exploration/
• The Library of Congress web archiving program, which preserves millions of websites pertaining to significant events such as the terror attacks of 9/11 and United States Presidential elections
• The National Digital Newspaper Program of more than 15 million newspaper pages available via API and with text and image bulk downloads (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/about/api/) The Records of the U.S. Copyright Office, including digital deposits
• The Law Library of Congress collection of more than 2.8 million law books and other legal resources
• The Library's general collection of 35 million book volumes
• The Library's subscriptions to e-journals and electronic databases

Scholars are encouraged to think creatively about how the Library's collections may inform their work and expand the impact of their research.

Please note: Although the Library of Congress continues to collect and archive select tweets, the Twitter Archive is not currently available to researchers.

Visas

Foreign nationals (not United States Citizens or Permanent Residents) awarded Library of Congress fellowships for research in the U.S. may be eligible for a Library-sponsored exchange visitor visa (category J-1). Even if it would otherwise be possible for a foreign visitor to enter the U.S. without this type of visa, it is the most appropriate category for Library-provided fellowship opportunities.

The Library’s Contracts and Grants Directorate will provide documents necessary to apply for the J-1 visa. Please email visas@loc.gov to request the documents, if you are selected for a Library of Congress fellowship. In the email include the information provided in the Library’s offer letter.

Foreign nationals already in the U.S. on visas obtained through or sponsored by other institutions should send an email to visas@loc.gov to obtain guidance on eligibility under existing visas. Do not email any Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to visas@loc.gov. The Library will send you information on how to provide information after we receive your email. Please note that individuals with H-1B visas are not eligible for Library opportunities, and all other visa types will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Read more about the application and selection process