The Mullen Fellowship offers stipends of up to $3000 per applicant to support research at any archive that has sf holdings pertinent to the dissertation topic. The program was instituted to honor Richard “Dale” Mullen, founder of Science Fiction Studies.
Qualified applicants will be PhD students from any accredited doctoral program who are pursuing an approved dissertation topic in which science fiction (broadly defined) is a major emphasis. The research may involve science fiction of any nation or culture and of any era. Applications may propose research in—but need not limit themselves to—specialized sf archives such as the Eaton Collection at UCR, the Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland, the Judith Merril Collection in Toronto, or the SF Foundation Collection in Liverpool. Proposals for work in general archives with relevant sf holdings—authors’ papers, for example—are also welcome. For possible research locations, applicants may wish to consult the partial list of sf archives compiled in SFS 37.2 (July 2010): 161-90. This list is also available online at: <http://sfanthology.site.wesleyan.edu/files/2010/08/WASF-Teachers-Guide-2Archives.pdf>.
The application should be written in English and should describe the dissertation, clarifying the centrality of science fiction to the project’s overall design. It should show knowledge of the specific holdings and strengths of the archive in which the proposed research will be conducted, and it should provide a work-plan and budget. Candidates should clarify why research in this particular archive is crucial to the proposed project. Students who receive awards must acknowledge the support provided by SFS’s Mullen Fellowship program in their completed dissertations and in any published work that makes use of research supported by the fellowship.
A complete application consists of a project description (approximately 500 words) with a specific plan of work, updated curriculum vitae, itemized budget, and two letters of reference, including one from the faculty supervisor of the dissertation.
Applications should be submitted electronically to the chair of the evaluation committee, Sherryl Vint, at sherryl.vint@gmail.com. Applications are due April 1, 2016 and awards will be announced May 1, 2016. The selection committee in 2016-17 consists of Neil Easterbrook and DeWitt Douglas Kilgore (SFS Advisory Board members) and Carol McGuirk and Sherryl Vint, SFS editors.