Stone PhD Scholar Fellowships

The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone PhD Scholars
in Inequality and Wealth Concentration

 

The Stone Program invites applications for the 2023-2024 Stone Scholar Fellowships, which are funded fellowship opportunities for current Harvard PhD students in the social sciences who will advance a new generation of research on inequality, wealth concentration, and mobility.

Fellowship awards
The fellowships provide a $34,000 dissertation research stipend, held in reserve until the dissertation stage (generally G-4 year).

Applications due
The 2024 application deadline will be announced here.

Eligibility
Harvard PhD students in the social sciences now completing their first or second year of doctoral study (G-1 or G-2).  Students from Harvard’s PhD programs in African and African-American Studies, Economics, Education, Government, Health Policy, Political Economy and Government, Psychology, Public Policy, Social Policy, Sociology, or in a related doctoral program with a focus on social science or policy research are eligible to apply.

Requirements
Those selected as Stone PhD Scholars join the Stone Program in their G-2 or G-3 year, beginning the three-term proseminar course sequence in the upcoming fall term. The three-term sequence combines multidisciplinary training in social science research on inequality and a structured setting in which to advance Scholars’ own research on inequality. 

The curriculum in the first two terms draws primarily on research from the disciplines of economics, political science, sociology, and social policy and is structured as a discussion-based graduate seminar. The sequence is designed to introduce students to topics in social policy and to familiarize them with perspectives on inequality from multiple fields. Over the course of these two terms, students will advance their own research project and write a paper in the field of inequality.

In the third semester, students will workshop their papers with the other Stone Scholars in the course, the course instructor, and visiting speakers, who will visit the pro-seminar, read, and comment on the Stone Scholars’ papers. It is then crucial that Fellows must submit (1) a draft working paper of their research project, (2) a pre-analysis plan, or (3) an extended abstract with sufficient detail for substantive evaluation, including a statement of the research question (and the underlying theory, if appropriate) and a description of the data and research methods (and, potentially but not necessarily, preliminary findings) by the start of the third semester of the sequence. Failure to submit this work by the deadline precludes enrollment in the third-semester course and will result in enrollment in the third-semester course the following year.

Students not ready to embark on an original research project should wait to apply in a following year.

Fellows are strongly encouraged to attend Stone Program seminar events and may be required to do so as part of their enrollment in the proseminar sequence.

How to Apply
The application form and recommendation waiver are writable PDF forms. Applicants are urged to save the documents to their computer before beginning any edits and to test the save process before completing the application form in its entirety.

The student portion of the application will consist of the following six items, with items 1-4 collated in a single PDF document (file name: yourlastname.pdf) to be submitted by email to inequality@harvard.edu. The two recommendation waiver forms should be sent as separate attachments to the same address.

  • Application form
  • Research statement (1000-1200 words)
  • An updated curriculum vitae
  • Unofficial transcript
  • Recommendation #1 waiver form
  • Recommendation #2 waiver form
  • PLUS two recommendation letters - (To be submitted directly by faculty member)
    To be sent by recommenders to inequality@harvard.edu. Those writing on behalf of multiple students may submit a single letter that briefly evaluates each student in turn. See waiver form for details.
  • Applicants must disclose other sources of funding, including external funding. Fellowship recipients cannot pair full funding from other sources at the same time that they receive their dissertation-stage stipend, but can be eligible to receive a stipend amount reduced by the total amount of another award taken concurrently.

Questions should be sent to inequality@harvard.edu.