Tuesday, February 27, 2007

ASLH Announces Availability of Research Support in American Legal History

Cromwell Fellowships and Murphy Award
The Committee on Research Awards and Fellowships of the

In 2007, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation will make available a number of awards intended to support research and writing in American legal history. The Cromwell Foundation was established in 1930 to promote and encourage scholarship in legal history, particularly in the colonial and early national periods of the United States. The number of awards to be made in any year, and their amounts, is at the discretion of the Foundation. In the past two years, the trustees of the Foundation have made three to five awards annually, in amounts up to $5,000. Preference will be given to scholars at the early stages of their careers. The Society's Committee on Research Awards and Fellowships reviews the applications and makes recommendations to the Foundation.

In 2007, the American Society for Legal History will once more make available the Paul L. Murphy Award, honoring the memory of Paul L. Murphy, late Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Minnesota and distinguished scholar of U.S. constitutional history and the history of American civil rights/civil liberties. The Murphy Award, an annual research grant of up to $1,500, is intended to assist the research and publication of work by scholars new to the field of U.S. constitutional history or the history of American civil rights/civil liberties. To be eligible for the Murphy Award, an applicant must: (1) be engaged in significant research and writing on U.S. constitutional history or the history of civil rights/civil liberties in the United States, preferably employing multi-disciplinary research approaches; (2) hold, or be a candidate for, the Ph.D. in History or a related discipline; and (3) not yet have published a book-length work in U.S. constitutional history or the history of American civil rights/civil liberties, and, if employed by an institution of higher learning, not yet be tenured. [Pictured is the best image I could find of one of Murphy's books, World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States.]

Applicants for both the Cromwell Fellowships and the Murphy Award should submit a three to five page description of their proposed project, a curriculum vita, a budget, a timeline, and two letters of recommendation from academic referees. There is no application form. The committee would prefer to receive all materials in electronic form, via email.
Applications must be received no later than June 30, 2007. Successful applicants will be notified in mid-November, 2007.

To apply, please send all materials to:

Professor Hendrik Hartog
Chair, The Committee on Research Awards and Fellowships
History Department
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
hartog@princeton.edu

In addition to Professor Hartog, Barbara A. Black, Columbia University, Robert W. Gordon, Yale University, Maeva Marcus, George Washington University, Christopher L. Tomlins, American Bar Foundation, and Sandra VanBurkleo, Wayne State University, are members of the Committee.