Alumni & Friends Fellowship
The RRCHNM Alumni & Friends Fellowship supports PhD students at George Mason University who are working on digital dissertations. When fundraising for this endowed fellowship is complete, it will fund a summer fellowship in perpetuity.
Over one hundred PhD students in history from GMU have graduated and gone on to careers as professors and teachers, librarians and archivists, museum professionals and civil servants, software developers and business leaders, among many other careers. They have brought RRCHNM‘s unique combination of digital methods and historical research with them.
That’s because GMU’s PhD program in history, now in its 25th year, was created to be a “doctorate with a difference.” The PhD program was founded after RRCHNM, with the idea that digital history would be a distinctive aspect of the education we offer. All GMU PhD students take classes in digital history with RRCNM faculty, and many work alongside our faculty and staff on our projects.
But a PhD isn’t just about learning from others or working with them. A PhD is fundamentally about developing independence as a researcher and creating new knowledge by applying—and perhaps inventing—research methods. And that takes time.
As a relatively young university, GMU has fewer fellowships for graduate students than we would like. But when given the time to focus on their research, our PhD students have created digital scholarship that leads the field. In particular, our PhD students have led the field in creating digital dissertations.
The Alumni and Friends Fellowship aims to provide a summer fellowship for graduate students creating digital dissertations. Our fundraising goal is $250,000 in an endowed fund. Thanks to a generous lead gift by Carol Lasser, Gary Kornblith, and Simon Kornblith, we have been able to open this campaign. Gifts by our alumni and friends will enable our PhD students to continue leading the field by creating groundbreaking digital scholarship.