Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program 2027 in the United States

The Smithsonian pays researchers to come and work inside its collections and laboratories. The programme is open by academic stage rather than by nationality, and it runs across a wide sweep of subjects from evolutionary biology to the history of African art.

What is on offer

There are four routes. Ten-week fellowships for graduate students, predoctoral fellowships for doctoral candidates doing dissertation research, postdoctoral fellowships for scholars up to five years past the doctorate, and senior fellowships for those further along. Terms run from three to twelve months for all but the graduate route, and science postdoctoral applicants may ask for up to twice that.

The money

The published rates are these: Fellowship Category Research Allowance Ten-Week Graduate Student $45,000 per year up to $5,000 Senior & Postdoctoral* $60,000 per year *Earth and Planetary Sciences Senior and Postdoctoral - $65,000 per year. Read that as an annual rate applied pro rata to the length of your term, with a separate research allowance on top for the graduate route.

Subjects covered

The field list is unusually broad. It spans animal behaviour and environmental science with an emphasis on the tropics, anthropology and archaeology, astrophysics, earth sciences and paleobiology, evolutionary biology, folklife, the history of science and technology, art history including African and contemporary art, materials research, molecular biology and the social history of the United States.

What you need in place

This is an in-residence programme built around a host. Members of the Smithsonian research staff serve as advisers, so your proposal has to connect to their collections, facilities or research interests rather than stand alone. Doctoral candidates must have cleared everything but the dissertation, certified by a proposal defence before the fellowship starts.

Deadline

All applications must be submitted by October 15, 2026 11:59 PM ET. Decisions are announced through the application system in the middle of the following March. Note that the astrophysical observatory runs its own requirements and its own dates.