AAS-Gale Fellowship

Application Deadline has passed

Thank you to all who applied for the 2023 AAS-Gale Fellowship opportunity. 74 eligible applications were received.

About

The AAS-Gale Non-Residential Fellowship will support research or teaching projects that rely on Gale Primary Sources and use digital humanities methodologies. Award fellows will be given access to Gale Digital Scholar Lab to use with China and the Modern WorldArchives Unbound – Asian studies titles, and Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Asia and the West for the duration of their fellowship. Applicants must make clear how they will use digital methods and the corpus of materials in Gale Primary Sources to further their research and teaching. 

There will be five AAS-Gale Non-Residential Fellowships available. Each award will be $2,500 and support the equivalent of one month’s full-time work (160 hours). Awardees may dedicate four consecutive weeks of their full working hours to the fellowship project or spread their work out over a longer period. Fellowships will be awarded by May 30, 2023 and must be completed by November 30, 2023.  

Recipients of the Gale Fellowship will be invited to submit a panel proposal at the 2024 AAS Annual Conference, where they will have the opportunity to share the results of their research projects. In addition, Fellows will receive an additional $500 stipend from Gale to present their work at the AAS Annual Conference in 2024 in Seattle, WA, to assist with their travel and accommodation expenses.

The application deadline was Monday, April 24th at 11:59 pm ET

Who is eligible to apply?

  • Current AAS Members (all applicants must be AAS members at the time of application).
  • All AAS Members, including current PhD students, postdocs, independent scholars, early career scholars, and senior scholars, are encouraged to apply.

How to Apply

All applications must be submitted via the application portal at the button below. Applications submitted via email will not be accepted.

Please prepare:

  • A 500-word cover letter detailing how your current professional experience equips you to succeed in the fellowship.
  • 1,000-word project proposal, including your research plan, and how you would utilize Gale Digital Scholar Lab, in conjunction with China and the Modern World and/or Archives Unbound – Asian Studies titles, and/or Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Asia and the West. Any of the archives mentioned may be used separately or in combination on the condition that they be used with Gale Digital Scholar Lab to advance their digital humanities research methods.
  • A CV (no longer than 3 pages).

Within one month of the conclusion of their Fellowship, each awardee will submit a 2-3 page case study derived from their work that explains how they used the corpus of materials in China and the Modern World, Archives Unbound – Asian studies titlesNineteenth Century Collections Online: Asia and the West, and Gale Digital Scholar Lab and other select Gale resources. The report should highlight the research or pedagogical value of their project.

Thank you to everyone who applied; applicants were notified by May 30, 2023 of their application status.

Watch the information session about this fellowship opportunity! It is highly recommended applicants watch this video before applying. View presentation slides prepared by Chris Houghton.

View the Fellowship Awardees:

2023 AAS-Gale Fellows

Daniel Barish

Baylor University, Early Career Scholar
The Imperial Politics of Life and Death in Modern China, 1861-1929

My book project, The Imperial Politics of Life and Death in Modern China, 1861-1929, explores changes to major Qing Court rituals such as imperial weddings and funerals and their impact on Republican-era politics. Over the course of the era as the Court embarked on projects of dynastic reconstruction, previously private rituals became matters of national concern and public spectacle. With the support of the Fellowship, I will explore the increasingly global audience and international roster of participants in Qing rituals to uncover their relationship with nation-building projects and the place of the Qing in the international world order.

Ruochen Chen

History Department, Washington University in St. Louis, Ph.D. candidate
Amphibious China: Port Infrastructure and the Maritime Transfomation of Shanghai, 1840s-1930s

Ruochen Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department of Washington University in St. Louis. His research “Amphibious Semi-Colonialism: Navigation, Maritime Law, and State-Building in Modern China” studies how negotiations and contestations between multiple sovereignties in controlling a set of infrastructural sinews between sea and land fermented a semi-colonial political and legal structure in treaty-era China. Currently, he focuses on using the Gale archives and Digital Scholar Lab to map how British diplomats and merchants adopted different visions and strategies in shaping the Chinese Maritime Customs Service as a wedge of its informal maritime empire in China from the 1850s to the 1920s, and how that possibly led China onto a diverging path from Japan.

Xiaoyu Gao

University of Chicago, Ph.D. Candidate
Empire of Copper: China Currency and British Global Trade in the Long 19th Century

This research investigates the causes of the Qing Empire’s financial and economic crises in the mid-19th century, employing a lens of globalization, colonialism, and Pacific trade. These crises catalyzed the devastating Taiping and Panthay Rebellions, claiming over 20 million lives. Utilizing archives from Latin America, Britain, and China, this study explores how British private merchants had dominated Latin American copper production and trade, smuggling millions of pounds of higher-quality, cheaper metal into China annually. The influx of Latin American copper may decimate China’s domestic production, potentially leading to excessive counterfeit Qing cash and a catastrophic financial crisis. By delving into these connections, this study contributes to understanding the intricate dynamics between colonial powers and the Qing Empire’s financial stability. It feeds into broader debates concerning the influences of globalization, trade, and currency management on national economies

Haoran Ni

University of Kansas, Ph.D. candidate
Drinking American Modernity: The ‘Glocalization’ of American Summer Refereshments in Twentieth-Century Shanghai

My proposed project aims to explore the popularity of American foods, represented by Coca-Cola, in Republican Shanghai (1912-1949). This is an interdisciplinary study of food, gender and women, and science and technology. Based on the Gale sources, I will investigate the American cultural influences on Republican Chinese societies, the transnational economic exchanges between China and the US, and contemporary Shanghai residents’ daily entertainment and everyday lives.

Wei Wu

University of Oslo, Ph.D. candidate
Tracing the Institutionalization of Personnel Management in the Maritime Customs Service of China during the Interwar Period

This project investigates the evolution of personnel management at the Maritime Customs Service of China to illustrate the role of meritocracy in the formation of modern East Asian bureaucracy. This research will reconstruct staff appointment, promotion and withdrawal via the Records of the Maritime Customs Service of China, 1854-1949 in China and the Modern World database, further investigate the career paths of representative individuals from a longue durée and “horizontal continuity” perspective via Gale Primary Sources, and explore the interrelationship between the archival materials via Gale Digital Scholar Lab. This case study aims to show how Gale digital humanities tools could facilitate transnational and cross-regional research on Asian history.

FAQ

Are MA students allowed to apply?

MA students are not encouraged to apply due to the requirement to utilize the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, which is better suited for Doctoral or Postdoctoral research.

Can I use sources in Gale Digital Scholars Lab for my publication?

Scholars can publish sources found in Gale Digital Scholars Lab; however, they cannot be published in books for commercial sale. Visualizations may be used in a monograph.

Will this be a recurring Fellowship opportunity?

At this time, no. The Fellowship is a one-off program for the summer of 2023 and will not be offered again in future years.

Is there a citizenship requirement with this Fellowship?

No, there is no citizenship requirement. Any current AAS member is welcome to apply regardless of nationality.

What is included with Gale Digital Scholar Lab?
What is the timeline of this Fellowship?

Fellowships will be awarded by May 30, 2023 and must be completed by November 30, 2023. To allow flexibility to those with teaching or other professional engagements, awardees may dedicate four consecutive weeks of their full working hours to the fellowship project or spread their work out over a more extended period.

Questions? Email grants@asianstudies.org