About the Fellowship

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress invites qualified scholars to apply for a post-doctoral fellowship in the field of health and spirituality. Made possible by a generous endowment from the International Center for the Integration of Health and Spirituality (ICIHS), the fellowship is named in honor of the ICIHS's late founder, David B. Larson, an epidemiologist and psychiatrist who focused on potentially relevant but understudied factors which might help in prevention, coping, and recovering from illness.

The fellowship is designed to continue Dr. Larson's legacy of promoting meaningful, scholarly study of health and spirituality, two important and increasingly interrelated fields. It seeks to encourage the pursuit of scholarly excellence in the scientific study of the relation of religiousness and spirituality to physical, mental, and social health. The fellowship provides an opportunity for a period of six to twelve months of concentrated use of the collections of the Library of Congress, through full-time residency in the Library's John W. Kluge Center. The Kluge Center is located in the splendid Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library, and it furnishes attractive work and discussion space for its scholars, as well as easy access to the Library's specialized staff and to the intellectual community of Washington, D.C. If necessary, special arrangements may be made with the National Library of Medicine for access to its materials as well.

Application and Selection

Applicants must submit:

• A completed application form, in English
• A curriculum vitae (maximum 2 pages; additional pages will be discarded)
• A single paragraph abstract
• A statement of proposed research (maximum 3 pages)
• An explanation of why the Library of Congress is the required venue for your research (maximum 1 paragraph)
• A bibliography of works you have consulted for your proposal (maximum 3 pages)
• Two references with completed reference forms from people who have read the research proposal

The research proposal must define those aspects the applicant wishes to study about the relationship between religiousness and spirituality, and physical, mental, and social health. Research perspectives may begin with, but need not be limited to, medical, psychiatric, psychological, nursing, public health, religious, ministerial, legal, sociological, anthropological, or historical experience. Interdisciplinary or cross-cultural proposals are welcomed. Applicants should be prepared to indicate those Library of Congress collections they anticipate using. Successful proposals will clearly indicate the purpose and principal scholarly contribution of the project, as well as the benefit of working in the Library of Congress for the proposed project.

Read more about the application and selection process