David Center for the American Revolution Fellowships

The David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society's Library & Museum in Philadelphia invites applications for predoctoral and short-term resident research fellowships. David Center Fellowships continue the 30-year tradition of the David Library awarding over 200 fellowships to scholars who have gone on to write hundreds of dissertations, academic articles, academic papers and books, and to teach at major institutions of higher learning worldwide, about the American Revolution and Founding Era. These funding opportunities provide support to scholars in all fields who show a demonstrated need to use the collections for their projects.

The David Center for the American Revolution integrates the rich manuscript, microfilm, and print collections of the David Library with the Early American history collections of the APS to create a one-stop-shop for the study of the American Revolution. The David Library collections consist of approximately 8,000 volumes, 9,000 reels of microfilm, and the large Sol Feinstone manuscript collection. The Sol Feinstone Collection, a rich collection of letters and documents, was assembled by DLAR Founder Sol Feinstone (1888-1980) over a period of fifty years. It includes material on almost all notable Americans from before the Revolution to the 1850s, as well as prominent Europeans and documents related to military affairs. This adds to the APS Library's Early American History Collections, which are particularly strong for the period from 1750 to 1840. In addition to the Benjamin Franklin Papers and the Thomas Paine Collection, the APS has a wide assortment of documents from the revolutionary era. Among these are official government documents and correspondence, military records that range from the Continental Army to Pennsylvania county records, and personal correspondence from various historical actors. Comprehensive, searchable guides and finding aids to these collections are available online at www.amphilsoc.org/library and http://amphilsoc.pastperfectonline.com/.

Current and Past Recipients

2022-2023

The David Center for the American Revolution Predoctoral Fellow

Helena Yoo Roth, The Graduate Center, CUNY, “American Timelines: Imperial Communications, Colonial Time-Consciousness, and the Coming of the American Revolution”


David Center for the American Revolution Short-Term Resident Research Fellows

Iris de Rode, Université Paris 8, "Military Enlightenment on the Ground"

Susan (Brynne) Long, University of Delaware, “The Disagreeable Situation in Between the Civil and the Military”: Prisoner of War Management in the American Revolution”

Andrea Miles, University of Louisville, "Black Rebels: African American Revolutionaries from North Carolina During and After the War of Independence"

Darcy Stevens, University of Maine, "Allegiance and Neutrality in the American Revolutionary Northeast Borderlands"


David Center for the American Revolution International Research Fellows

Joel Herman, Trinity College, Dublin, "Revolutionary Currents: Ideas, Information, and the Imperial Public Sphere in Dublin and New York, c.1760-1784"

Luyao Liu, Fudan University, "Property and Foreign Relations in Early America"

Elodie Peyrol Kleiber, University of Poitiers, "Unfree labor in the French and English Americas: indentured servants, planters and legislators, 17th-18th centuries"

2021-2022

The David Center for the American Revolution Postdoctoral Fellow [2021-2023]

Sean Gallagher, University of California, Davis, “Slaves of the Revolution: Enslaved Public Labor in the War for Independence”


The David Center for the American Revolution Predoctoral Fellow

Nicole Breault, University of Connecticut, Storrs, “The Night Watch of Boston: Law and Governance in Eighteenth-Century British America”


David Center for the American Revolution Short-Term Resident Research Fellows

Kieran O’Keefe, George Washington University, “Suffering for the Crown: The Hudson Valley Loyalists, Violence, and Forced Migration in Revolutionary North America”

Adam McNeil, Rutgers University, “‘I Would No Go With Him’: Black Women, Liberty, and Loyalism in the Revolutionary Era Mid-Atlantic, 1775-1815”

Keely Smith, Princeton University, “Communicating Power and Sovereignty: Creek and Seminole Communication Networks, 1715-1880”

Helena Yoo Roth, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, "American Timelines: Imperial Communications, Colonial Time-Consciousness, and the Coming of the American Revolution"

2020-2021

David Center for the American Revolution Short-Term Resident Research Fellows

Meg Roberts, University of Cambridge, “Domestic Caregiving in the American Revolution”

Robert Wright, Augustana University, “Economic Policy and the American Revolution” 

Benjamin Bankhurst, Shepherd University, “Maryland Loyalism Project”

Christopher Pearl, Lycoming College, “The War Executives: Debating and Creating Executive Power During the American Revolutionary War”