The Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is welcoming applications for three prestigious fellowships for 2025 – the Eudora Welty Research Fellowship, the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellowship, and the Religion in Mississippi History Research Fellowship.
Each competitive fellowship provides a stipend of $5,000, which can be utilized for a minimum of two weeks of research at MDAH next summer.
Eudora Welty Research Fellowship
In collaboration with the Eudora Welty Foundation, the Eudora Welty Research Fellowship is awarded annually to a graduate or doctoral student from an accredited institution. This fellowship enables recipients to conduct research using the Eudora Welty Collection and related materials at MDAH. The Eudora Welty Collection is renowned as the most diverse literary collection in the U.S. It includes over 45 series, including manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, drawings, essays, family documents, and audio-visual materials spanning Welty’s entire life.
Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellowship
The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellowship, offered in partnership with the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, is intended for a graduate student or early-career faculty member within five years of their academic journey. This fellowship provides access to the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers at MDAH. The Evers Papers include family documents dating from the early 1900s to July 1964, when Myrlie Evers relocated to Claremont, California, with her children. The collection includes four main subgroups: the papers of Medgar Evers as the NAACP’s Mississippi field secretary, family papers from both Medgar and Myrlie Evers, and records relating to the State of Mississippi v. Byron De La Beckwith cases from 1964 and 1994.
Religion in Mississippi History Research Fellowship
The Religion in Mississippi History Research Fellowship aims to promote the exploration of the extensive archival collections related to religious history in Mississippi at MDAH. This fellowship is part of MDAH’s Religion Initiative, supported by funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. It is available to graduate or doctoral students at accredited institutions interested in conducting primary source research in MDAH’s rich archival resources concerning religious history in Mississippi.
Each fellowship recipient is required to conduct research on-site at the archives for at least two weeks during the summer months. The deadline for all 2025 fellowship applications is March 7, 2025. For more details and to access the application portal for each fellowship, click here.
