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Women@MIT Research Guide: Women@MIT Fellowship

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About the Fellowship

MIT Libraries’ Department of Distinctive Collections (DDC) has hosted two rounds of the Women@MIT Fellowship. The Fellowship provides funding for artists, activists, musicians, writers, and scholars who are engaged in the expansion and expression of knowledge to help inform the understanding of women in MIT’s history and the history of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We are particularly interested in those who will apply the interdisciplinary lenses and methodologies of women’s studies, gender studies, and/or race and ethnic studies to their work. 

The next call for proposals will be posted in December 2025.

About the Fellowship

Types of Projects

Fellows are encouraged to produce work in fields outside of traditional academic research and publication. A few examples of possible projects include

  • Artistic performance (musical, theatrical, etc.)

  • Comic book, graphic novel, or zine

  • Develop a video game prototype

  • Essay, group of poems, or work of fiction

  • Sculpture, installation, or other artwork

  • Short film or podcast

  • Curation of digital exhibit

Expectations

  • Participants will spend 10 to 15 hours a week engaged in research (either in person or using digital copies of materials) or other work related to their project

  • Participants will spend 1 to 3 hours a week taking part in meetings, programs, and opportunities for collaboration with other MIT Libraries staff

  • All participants must complete a project that will be shared with the public within 60 days of the completion of the fellowship

Timeline

  • Applications are due by midnight on January 17, 2025 with expectations of reaching out to candidates for next steps by February 28, 2025.

  • The process will include a review by committee members, selection of finalists, with interviews scheduled for early April.  

  • Fellowship dates are flexible but should take place between July and September 2025.

Stipend and Benefits

  • Each Women@MIT Fellowship project will receive a stipend in the amount of $5,000.

  • Other benefits include extensive research support from DDC staff as described above, with opportunities to build connections with librarians, archivists, and curators in other local libraries and museums.

Eligibility

The Fellowship is open to applicants 18 years or older.

In order to make the archives more accessible to researchers from a wide range of interests and practices, we encourage people to apply regardless of their educational, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Application Information

Application materials

  • A 1500-1800 word project proposal detailing the applicant’s plan for the fellowship’s work product and commitment to interdisciplinary methodologies of women’s studies, gender studies, and/or ethnic studies.  

  • Curriculum Vitae/Resume or Statement of Experience

Proposal guidelines

Applicants should provide a detailed description of the proposed research and resulting project. The description should:

  • outline the major question, problem or themes to be explored

  • identify archival collections at MIT which will be used in the project

  • summarize the plan for carrying out the project, including an estimated timeline

  • describe how this proposal intersects with your work and area of expertise

  • discuss how this work will inform a greater understanding of women in STEM

  • summarize how you are equipped to complete this project and what unique experience or skills you bring to it

Selection

The 2025 Women@MIT Fellows will be selected based on the quality and consistency of work samples, the potential of the proposed project to be accessible and interesting to a diverse audience, and the connections between the proposed project and the MIT Libraries’ Department of Distinctive Collections’ materials.

A Note on Generative AI 

Using generative AI for preparing Fellowship proposals is permissible for initial research, brainstorming your ideas, and as an editorial aid. However, your submitted proposal must not be substantially written by generative AI. We will be able to tell.

Past Fellows

2023 

View recording of Fellows' presentations

  • Mapping Migration at MIT is a StoryMap highlighting the voices of eighteen international women from the MIT community, using oral history interviews from MIT's Department of Distinctive Collections and the Science History Institute's Digital Collections. These eighteen women come from all over the world and their experiences at MIT span the twentieth century. "Mapping Migration at MIT" is an opportunity to shed light on the diversity of people who do science at MIT and to feature the stories of international women at MIT in their own words.

    • Rachel Lane is a historian and writer who holds a BA in history and Spanish from Hillsdale College and an MA in history with an emphasis in public history from Norwich University.

  • Sisters in Making: Prototyping and the Feminine Resilience works to explore and reveal the multi-level efforts of women surrounding the invention and implementation of Core Rope Memory and Magnetic Core Memory in the Apollo Guidance Computer that put man on the moon in 1969. From their use in early NASA Mars space probes to becoming an integral component of the Apollo 11 Moon Mission, MIT dedicated a tremendous workforce, alongside its commercial and federal partners, to perfecting its implementation of Core Memories.

    • Soala Lolia Ajienka designs artifacts that have their bearing in material forms and transformations that cut across the disciplines of architecture, textiles and art.

    • Deborah Tsogbe is a design researcher and holds a Masters in design computation from MIT.

2021

  • A Lab of One’s Own: An Immersive Virtual Installation is a video game in which participants play an unnamed researcher living on a small island scattered with several observation stations. As players interact with the environment, including laboratory equipment, paper ephemera, and other objects, they will activate a pop-up user interface through which different characters tell stories about their life and discoveries.

    • Mariana Roa Oliva creates fiction, performance, and installation works and holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.

    • Maya Bjornson is a multimedia artist and a graduate of the Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Dual Degree program.