Wallace Fellowship 2027/2028 at Harvard’s: Complete Guide for Scholars

Last verified: 31 August 2026

The Wallace Fellowship asks for something most research awards never ask for. You cannot hold it twice. You cannot push it back to a year that suits you better. And once you accept it, you are expected to be physically present at a villa in the hills above Florence at least three days of every week you hold the award.

That single rule tells you what kind of fellowship this is. I Tatti is not paying you to vanish into an archive somewhere else in Europe and send back a book two years later. It is paying you to join a small scholarly community for four or six months, take lunch with the other appointees, sit in the reading room, and let your project absorb the conversations that happen there. If that appeals to you, the rest of this guide walks through exactly what is on offer, who qualifies, and how the application works.

What the Wallace Fellowship Is

The Wallace Fellowship is a residential award at I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, located in Florence, Italy. It is funded by a grant from the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund.

Here is the part that catches many scholars off guard. This fellowship is not for people studying the Renaissance itself. It is for people studying what happened to the Renaissance afterwards. The official description is clear that Wallace Fellowships are designed for scholars exploring the historiography and impact of the Italian Renaissance in the Modern Era, meaning the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

For comparison, the separate I Tatti Fellowship at the same center covers postdoctoral research on the Italian Renaissance across the 14th to 17th centuries. So if your work sits in the Renaissance period itself, you are looking at the wrong award on the same website. If your work sits in how later generations read, rebuilt, collected, argued about or borrowed from the Renaissance, you are in the right place.

The center welcomes projects on a wide spread of topics, including:

• Historiography of the Renaissance and how scholarly interpretations have shifted over time
• Reactions to, transformations of, and commentary on the Italian Renaissance and its ties to modernity
• Museum history and the history of collecting
• The survival of the Renaissance in modern art and architecture, including photography and landscape architecture
• The Renaissance in modern literature and music
• The Renaissance in philosophy and political thought

Up to four Wallace Fellowships are awarded every year. Each one runs for either four months or six months.

The Rules That Shape Your Daily Life as a Fellow

Most guides bury this part at the bottom. It belongs at the top, because these conditions decide whether the fellowship fits your life at all, and no amount of enthusiasm for Florence will change them.

• You must live in the Florence area. This is a residential fellowship in the literal sense.
• You must spend at least three days a week at the center. Presence is part of the deal, not a suggestion.
• You must work only on the project you applied with. You are not permitted to work at the same time on editing other book or article projects.
• No teaching of any kind. Fellows may not take on other obligations such as teaching positions during any part of the fellowship period, and the rule explicitly covers part time roles.
• No stacking awards. The fellowship may not be held at the same time as another fellowship or award.
• One chance only. Term Fellowships at I Tatti can be held only once and cannot be deferred.
• Newcomers only. Term Fellowships are intended for scholars who have not previously held appointments at I Tatti. Former Graduate Fellows are the one exception.

The practical reading of that list is simple. Apply in a year when your calendar is genuinely clear. If you know you will be teaching a course in spring, or you have committed to editing a volume that will land mid fellowship, this is not your year. Because the award cannot be deferred, accepting it and then discovering a conflict is not a problem you can solve by postponing.

One more detail worth planning around. Your proposed research project can be a segment of a larger project. You do not need to promise a finished book in four months. A clearly defined chunk of a bigger piece of work is a legitimate and often stronger proposal.

What the Fellowship Pays

The financial package is built around a monthly grant rather than a lump sum.

• Monthly grant: USD 5,200 per month
• Relocation supplement: a one time payment towards relocation expenses, capped at USD 1,800
• Housing: when possible, an apartment is set aside for the Fellow’s use, rent free, though the Fellow pays the utility charges. If no apartment is available, a housing subsidy is offered instead to help offset rental costs
• Meals: lunch with the other appointees from Monday through Friday
• Library: use of the Biblioteca Berenson seven days a week
• Community: a limited number of activities each year are reserved for Fellows, who are also expected to join the wider community at conferences, lectures and concerts

To put the grant in plain numbers, a four month appointment comes to USD 20,800 in monthly payments, and a six month appointment comes to USD 31,200, with up to USD 1,800 on top for relocation.

What Is Not Covered

This matters more than the headline figure, so read it before you build a budget.

The Fellow is responsible for obtaining a visa, a permesso di soggiorno, and health coverage. Those are your costs and your paperwork, not the center’s. The official page also puts the responsibility on you to work out whether a visa is required in your case and, if it is, to obtain it before you travel.

Utilities on the rent free apartment are charged to you. And beyond the relocation supplement, the page does not describe a separate flight allowance or travel budget. So treat the relocation supplement as your travel and setup money, and plan accordingly rather than assuming airfare sits in a different line item.

None of this makes the package weak. A monthly grant of USD 5,200 with housing largely handled is generous by the standards of humanities fellowships. It simply is not a package where every euro you spend gets reimbursed, and you should walk in knowing that.

Who Can Apply

Read this as a checklist and be honest with yourself on each line, because several of these are absolute rather than flexible.

• You must have a PhD in hand at the time of application, and you will be asked to upload a scan of the certificate
• You may not be working on a second PhD at the time of application
• You must be conversant in English and have familiarity with Italian
• It must be possible for you to carry out most of your research in Florence
• You must be willing to work solely on the project you applied with
• You must not have held a previous appointment at I Tatti, unless you were a Graduate Fellow

Two further points shape the pool of successful candidates rather than gate it. Priority is given to early and mid career scholars. And while I Tatti welcomes applications from scholars of all nations, it gives special consideration to candidates who do not have regular access to research materials and facilities in Italy.

That second point deserves attention if you are applying from South Asia, Africa, Latin America or anywhere else far from Italian collections. Distance from the material is treated as a reason to support you, not a reason to doubt you. Say plainly in your proposal what you cannot reach from where you are, and what being in Florence would unlock.

How Applications Are Assessed

Applications are evaluated by international scholars, and the selection committee weighs three things in particular:

1. Your ability to contribute in a collegial way to the intellectual life of the Harvard Center. Remember the three days a week rule. They are choosing colleagues, not just projects.
2. The strength of the proposed project and its potential to yield original results. Originality of outcome is named explicitly, so a proposal that mostly consolidates existing scholarship will struggle.
3. Your curriculum vitae.

Write your proposal against those three criteria in that spirit. Make the argument for why the project needs Florence, why it will produce something new, and why you will be a useful presence in a small community for months on end.

Choosing Your Term: Fall or Winter Spring

Applicants indicate a preference between two windows:

• Fall: September through December
• Winter and spring: January through June

Since the fellowship runs four or six months, your term preference and your requested length together decide your window. Think about this practically rather than romantically. Consider when the collections and colleagues you need will actually be in Florence, when your own institution can release you cleanly, and how the timing sits with your visa processing, which can take longer than people expect.

Key Dates

• Application deadline: midnight, Cambridge, Massachusetts time, on 16 November 2026
• Recommendation letters deadline: 21 November 2026
• Term options: fall running September through December, or winter and spring running January through June

A word of caution on the closing time. Midnight Cambridge time is not midnight where most readers of this page live. In mid November, Cambridge runs five hours behind universal time, so its midnight falls during the morning in Pakistan and India and during the early hours in much of Europe. The safe move is to submit a full day early and stop counting hours.

A Note on the Cycle Year

The official Wallace Fellowship page states the deadline of 16 November 2026 without labelling the academic year beside it. Earlier in 2026, the same page said the deadline for the 2026/2027 academic year had passed and asked applicants to check back in August for a link to the 2027/2028 application. That link is now live, which is why this guide treats the current round as the 2027/2028 cycle.

If the exact cycle matters to your planning, and it will if you are negotiating leave with your department, confirm it in writing with the I Tatti fellowship office before you submit. That is a one email question and it removes any doubt.

Also Check: Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program 2027 in the USA

How to Apply, Step by Step

1. Decide your term and length first. Four or six months, fall or winter spring. This shapes the proposal you write.
2. Write the project proposal. It can be written in English or in Italian.
3. Prepare your CV.
4. Scan your PhD certificate. You will be asked to upload it, so locate the document early rather than in November.
5. Register your two referees as early as possible. Applicants must have two scholars who know their work well submit recommendations online. Use the reference tab in the application system to register them. Your referees then receive an email explaining how to access the system and upload their letters.
6. Submit electronically before the deadline through the official application portal at https://itatti.slideroom.com

It is stated plainly that informing your referees about the nature of your project and the submission deadline is your responsibility, not the center’s. Do not assume a system generated email will do that job for you. Write to them yourself, attach your proposal, and remind them a week out.

The official fellowship page sits at https://itatti.harvard.edu/wallace-fellowship and remains the authority on everything in this guide.

Also Check: Max Planck Dissertation Writing up Fellowships 2027 in Germany

How to Make Your Application Stronger

The eligibility bar is not the hard part. Four awards a year against an international pool of PhD holders is the hard part. A few things reliably separate a strong file from an average one.

Make Florence necessary, not pleasant. The committee needs to see that most of your research can be done there and that being elsewhere would genuinely cost the project. Name the collections, the archives, the buildings, the library holdings. A proposal that could be executed just as well from a university library at home is easy to decline.

Be specific about the modern angle. Because this fellowship covers reception and afterlife rather than the Renaissance itself, spell out your period and your evidence. A project on a 19th century collector, a 20th century restoration debate, or a modern architect reworking Renaissance form fits cleanly. A project that drifts back into the 15th century needs reframing or a different fellowship.

Show the segment, not the mountain. Because a proposal may represent a part of a larger project, define a piece of work that plausibly moves forward in four or six months. Overpromising reads as inexperience.

Treat the Italian requirement seriously. Familiarity with Italian is stated as a requirement. If your Italian is weak, the months before the deadline are the time to fix that, and your CV should show evidence rather than a claim.

Choose referees who can speak to the project, not just to you. Two letters is a small number. A generous letter from someone who has never read your work is a wasted slot.

Mistakes That Quietly Sink Applications

• Applying while a PhD is still in progress. The certificate requirement is absolute at the point of application.
• Proposing a project whose core sources sit in Rome, London or New York rather than Florence.
• Leaving referees until the final fortnight. They have their own deadlines in November.
• Failing to declare a commitment that conflicts with the no teaching and no concurrent award rules, and hoping it will not come up. It will.
• Applying again after already holding a Term Fellowship at I Tatti, which the rules do not allow.
• Assuming midnight on the deadline day means midnight in your own city.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply for two different I Tatti fellowships in the same year to improve my odds?

No. Scholars can apply for only one type of fellowship at I Tatti per academic year. So read the full list of awards the center offers, work out honestly which one matches your period and topic, and put your effort into that single application rather than splitting it.

Do I get an office at the center?

Not an office or a study. Term Fellows are given their own desk or carrel inside the library itself. For most humanities projects that is workable, but if your research needs a closed room, for example for interviews or for handling equipment, plan around a shared reading room environment.

Can my family come with me to Florence?

The official page acknowledges accompanying family members when it explains that the Fellow is responsible for obtaining a visa, a permesso di soggiorno and health coverage, and if appropriate for doing the same for accompanying family members. So family can join you, but their paperwork, their coverage and their costs are yours to arrange. The page does not describe any additional family allowance, so budget on that basis.

What if I already receive part of my salary or hold a smaller outside grant?

This must be declared. If a candidate receives partial salary or outside grants, it has to be indicated on the application or in later correspondence with the Director, and permission must be received. The rule to notice is that permission is required, not merely disclosure, so raise it early rather than after an offer.

Do the recommendation letters have to be written in English?

No. Recommendations can be written in English or in Italian, which gives Italian speaking referees a real option. Tell your referees this when you register them, since many will assume English is compulsory.

Is there a fee to apply?

The fellowship page does not state an application fee. Since applications are handled through an external submission platform, check the portal itself before you assume either way, and confirm with the fellowship office if anything is unclear. Never pay a third party who claims to be collecting a fee on the center’s behalf.

Conclusion:

The Wallace Fellowship is a serious offer for a specific kind of scholar. If your work is about how the Renaissance was received, rewritten, collected and argued over in the modern centuries, and if you can genuinely clear four or six months to live in Florence and show up three days a week, the terms are strong. USD 5,200 a month, housing largely handled, a relocation supplement, daily lunches with other appointees and a library open every day of the week is a rare combination in the humanities.

The two things that most often stop good candidates are practical, not intellectual. One is the PhD certificate requirement at the point of application. The other is referees left too late.

So start with a decision this week rather than in November. Pick your term, sketch the segment of your project that fits four or six months, and write to your two referees today with the 21 November 2026 date in the first line of the email. Then read the official page in full and confirm the cycle year before you submit.

Also Check: Hoover Fellows Program 2026 to 2027 at Stanford University, USA