I Tatti Fellowships 

Application Deadline October 15

Villa I Tatti in Florence offers up to fifteen fellowships each academic year for advanced research in any aspect of the Italian Renaissance. Each Fellow is offered a place to study, use of the Biblioteca and Fototeca Berenson, lunches on weekdays, and various other privileges, the most important of which is the opportunity to meet scholars from a variety of countries working in related fields. The Fellowship is open to scholars of any nationality. On the average, over more than forty years of operation, about half the Fellows have been North American and half from Europe and the rest of the world, though the proportion changes in any given year. 

The Fellowship is post-doctoral. With the ongoing redefinition of doctoral programs in Europe this has become more complex, but in general applicants must have completed all the requirements of the Ph.D., the D. Phil., the dottorato di ricerca, or an equivalent doctorate at the time of application, including submission and examination of the thesis. Doctoral candidates who are preparing a defense after the October 15 deadline are thus not eligible. Though in the past candidates with the British B.A. or the Italian laurea as their final degree have been awarded the fellowship, currently the Fellowship is awarded only after the doctorate.   A certificato di perfezionamento is not usually equivalent to a doctorate, with the exception of the Diploma di dottorato di ricerca in Italian law.

The Fellowship is meant for scholars who are still in the earlier stages of their career, and thus applications are accepted only for ten years after the doctorate.  Preference is given to scholars embarking on a new research project rather than to those who are continuing to work on the subject of their dissertations; applicants should thus describe both past and future work in their application.

Fellows are selected by an international committee of senior scholars in Italian Renaissance studies, representing such fields as literature, history, fine arts, music, philosophy, the history of science and the history of ideas. The committee meets in Cambridge, Massachusetts and makes its selections in mid-winter; applicants are generally informed of its decisions in February.

Projects do not have to be devoted to Florentine subjects, and often are not; but they must include the Italian Renaissance and it must be possible for the greater part of the project to be accomplished in Florence.  Necessary preliminary work in the archives of other Italian cities should be completed at the time of application.  The selection committee looks for demonstrable scholarly excellence and promise, requires a project of intellectual importance suited to the resources of I Tatti and Florence, and tries to assess the candidate’s ability to contribute in a collegial way to the intellectual life of the other Fellows. Fellows are required to devote full time to their projects and may not have other obligations such as teaching positions, even part-time ones, during their fellowship year. 

One of the goals of I Tatti is to establish an intellectual community in which a fruitful interchange of ideas can take place. Fellows are thus expected to spend at least two or three days a week at the Villa. Residence in the area of greater Florence is required, and it is not possible to hold the Fellowship while residing principally in other Italian cities, such as Rome, Siena, Pisa, Bologna, Milan or Venice.

The fiscal year for fellowships, as for all Harvard appointments, runs from July 1 to June 30. The academic year begins in early September, and all Fellows are expected to be in residence from then until the following June, and to participate actively in the life of the Center for the full period of their fellowship. 

Stipends will be awarded according to individual needs, and a projected budget is requested from successful candidates at a later stage. Stipends generally do not exceed the fifty thousand dollar range. The I Tatti Fellowship cannot be held concurrently with other major American fellowships, such as the Guggenheim, ACLS, NEH, or with major European grants.  However it is compatible with smaller grants for travel and research expenses, and with partial sabbatical salary from the candidate's university, all of which should be explained on the application or in subsequent correspondence with the Director.

Renewals or repeats of an I Tatti Fellowship are not granted.

Applications and the supporting material should arrive before the firm deadline of October 15.

Hard Copy Application

Application and supporting materials should be sent to both the Cambridge and Florence address:

Your application should include:  

1. A completed fellowship application form (click here to obtain a pdf form).

2. A compact curriculum vitae that does not exceed five pages, including a list of your publications.  Please indicate document title, date and page number in the header or footer.

3. A statement of the project to be developed at I Tatti, which should be about five double-spaced pages of normal typeface and in any case cannot exceed 1500 words.  Please give a word count at the beginning and indicate document title, date and page number in the header or footer.  The opening paragraph of the statement should be a concise abstract of the project.  A focused bibliography of one page (in addition to the 1500 words) should be added at the end.  The statement can be in English, Italian, French or German.

4. A photocopy of the doctoral certificate; an official transcript is not necessary.

Online Application

If you are submitting an online application, your application and supporting materials will be sent automatically to the Cambridge and Florence office; please do not send a hardcopy in the mail. 

Please click here to submit an online application whereby you will then receive instructions on how to attach items #2-4 (listed above).

  Letters of recommendation for both hardcopy and online applications

Three confidential letters of recommendation are required from scholars who know your work well. These should not be included with the application, and must not be sent or faxed by the candidate. They must be sent directly by the recommenders and should arrive by October 15, in one of the following ways:

• Hard copies on official letterhead, mailed to both the Cambridge and Florence addresses

or

• signed letter, scanned and sent by email attachment to applications@itatti.it;                                    or sent by fax to +39 055 3906894.  In these cases letters will automatically be forwarded to both addresses.