External Grants & Fellowship Resources

Graduate students in the Department of Government at Georgetown often secure external funding to support their education and research.  In recent years, many Georgetown students have been awarded grants and fellowships from numerous institutions. 

Various universities and organizations have constructed databases that include a large number of grants and fellowships offered by a multitude of entities around the world, and covering a great range of research interests. While the Georgetown Government Department at one time sought to maintain a list of such opportunities, these emerging databases, which are kept current by dedicated personnel at the institutions that create them, are a better resource for our graduate students. As such, we believe the best service that the Department can offer is to point students to these excellent resources to identify external funding opportunities. We are very grateful to DongJoon Park (PhD ‘20) and Deborah Groen (current PhD candidate) for assembling these resources.

Below are links to a collection of the most comprehensive databases publicly available at other universities. These universities perform an outstanding public service by making this information freely available, and we are grateful to them for doing so. These different databases allow students to tailor their searches to identify the most relevant funding opportunities. We include brief descriptions of these databases and tips on how to navigate them in order to help users efficiently utilize these sites. Below these resources from outside Georgetown are links to various resources offered by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) at Georgetown. We encourage you to spend time familiarizing yourself with all of these resources.

Resources from Other Universities and Organizations

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1. GT graduate students have full access to the database and can use all functions available on the site.
  2. Total Number of Grants/Fellowships – 1,000 +
  3. Number of Funding opportunities for “Social Sciences” and “all PhD levels” – ~ 500
  4. Comments:
    • Has a convenient tool to help students compare funding opportunities. After conducting a search after choosing filters, a list of funding opportunities is created. The user can then click on the “My Folder” icon located in the fourth column of each award to compile a list that he or she is particularly interested in. The list is saved and can be accessed later by the user via saved link.
    • The list also includes the name of the fellowship and a one sentence summary description.
    • The separate pages for each individual funding opportunity are clearly presented. The categories under which a particular fellowship falls are stated on the bottom of each page, which users can use to refine their searches.
    • Site also enables users to sort lists of opportunities according to either the name of fellowship or deadline, in ascending order.
    • Search facilitates identifying fellowships/grants.

University of Chicago 

  1. Accessibility: GT graduate students have full access to the database and can use all functions available on the site.
  2. Total Number of Grants/Fellowships – ~ 700
  3. Number of Funding Opportunities for “Social Sciences” and “all PhD levels” – ~ 460
  4. Comments:
    • Information presented more clearly than other databases. When a student clicks on a specific funding opportunity after conducting a search, each page includes information regarding each of the filters that the funding opportunity is listed under. This helps users revise their search. 
    • The wide range of applicable filters allows users to conduct more narrow searches for opportunities that specifically meet their needs. Because individual funding opportunities are often listed under multiple categories, there is less concern about too narrow searches.
    • About 15~20% (estimate) of grants/fellowships listed on the site are for Chicago University graduate students only. 
    • The list only shows the name of the fellowship.
    • Search facilitates identifying fellowships/grants.

UCLA

  1. Accessibility: GT graduate students have full access to database and can use all functions available on the site. 
  2. Total Number of Grants/Fellowships: ~ 625 
  3. Number of Funding Opportunities for “Social Sciences” and “all PhD levels”: N/A 
  4. Comments:
    • The list of fellowships/grants changes each time a filter is selected/deselected, which is convenient for narrowing down the range of opportunities a user is looking for. 
    • Individual pages for each fellowship/grant are organized systematically; each page provides information on the fellowship amount, deadlines, eligibility, citizenship, academic level, disciplines, award type, agency/organization, and contact information. 
    • At the bottom of each page the date when a particular page on a fellowship was last updated is listed so that users can tell how recent the information on the page is. 
    • The list shows the name of the fellowship as well as a couple of lines describing it. 
    • The list of fellowships can be sorted by the award name, deadline, or amount in both ascending and descending order. 
    • Search facilitates identifying fellowships/grants.

Yale University

  1. Accessibility: GT graduate students have full access to database and can use all functions available on the site. 
  2. Total Number of Grants/Fellowships: ~ 275
  3. Number of Funding Opportunities for “Social Sciences” and “all PhD levels”: ~ 30
  4. Comments:
    • Though the Yale Database is open to non-alumni users, the search results appear to be oriented towards students and graduates of Yale University. 
    • Unlike the other databases on this list, the Yale Database has a filter specifically for “Global Region or Country” which could be useful for people searching for funding for their field work outside the US.

Rutgers University

  1. Accessibility: GT graduate students have full access to database and can use all functions available on the site.
  2. Number of Funding Opportunities for “Social Sciences” and “all PhD levels”: N/A
  3. Search results are updated based on the filter selections that a user makes, making it easy to narrow or widen search. 

American Political Science Association

  1. Accessibility: GT graduate students have full access to database (open resource)
  2. Number of funding opportunities: ~ 150 across all categories, although there is considerable overlap with various foundations listed in multiple categories 
  3. Comments:
    • Funding opportunities are specifically oriented towards political science students and graduates. 
    • The section on “Organizations Providing Grants, Fellowships and Workshops in the Discipline” has a sublist of selected links that focus on political science. 
    • The list includes just the name of the fellowship and the deadline for applications. 
    • The links themselves direct users to the webpage for the individual fellowships/grants.

Georgetown University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Resources

  • The Office of External Fellowships also has a wide array of resources for writing grant and fellowship applications.