In May 2022, CLIR hosted its first in-person program-related meeting since March 2020: a symposium for former recipients of the CLIR-Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources. Titled “Looking Forward to the Past,” the symposium’s call invited former fellows to reflect upon their fellowship experiences and to share their insights into the future of global archival research.

Between 2002 and 2019, the generous support of the Mellon Foundation enabled CLIR to award fellowships annually to scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who conducted sustained periods of archival research, consulting rare and unique materials of all kinds around the world. CLIR received nearly 7,000 applications from graduate students enrolled in universities across the United States and awarded 258 fellowships through this program, which was particularly well suited to students engaged in broad comparative and transnational research and to those working with materials in multiple languages and a wide variety of contexts. Fellows visited over 1,750 research sites in 86 countries and 42 U.S. states, including libraries and archives of all types and sizes, museums, galleries, private collections, media organizations, and more, working with a vast array of materials. The artifacts the fellows studied spanned thousands of years in time and included nearly every conceivable type of original source material: rare books, manuscripts, printed records, artworks, archaeological artifacts, maps, musical scores, photographs, audio and audiovisual recordings, films, and ephemera.

The schedule for the event opened with a “virtual kickoff” consisting of a full day of online discussions and presentations from former fellows. Following, CLIR hosted three days of activities for 54 fellows and guests at the St. Louis Union Station Hotel.

Director of Global Strategic Initiatives Nicole Ferraiolo led the planning and organization of the symposium and afterwards reflected, “Fellows and staff alike shared that they left the meeting feeling more energized and connected than they have in a long time, and I know I feel similarly.” 

Participants responding to a survey about the event echoed these sentiments while acknowledging that the experience of reflecting on the program had been bittersweet. CLIR’s program is sunsetting at the same time as other longstanding programs supporting graduate students in the humanities, including the Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowships and the American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellowships. With fewer funding opportunities for students outside their universities, working for sustained periods with original sources simply will not be possible for many of them, diminishing the scope and scale of their research projects. One former fellow wrote, “Future scholars will not be able to ask (or answer) long-term research questions or use comparative methods. This is going to be crippling to the humanities.” Another lamented, “We’re losing one of the sole transnational research support systems for early scholars, and one that actually values experimentation and understands setbacks from its recipients. It’s a huge loss.” 

Over the coming months, CLIR will be working with fellows on a publication compiling the papers and ideas that came out of the symposium, and offering suggestions and recommendations for ongoing support and programming for future graduate students doing archival research.

CLIR president Charles Henry, who gave opening and closing remarks at the St. Louis event, observed, “It’s been a tremendous privilege to work with this community of creative scholars over the past two decades. What they have shared with us about the profound and unpredictable nature of archival research has shaped CLIR’s strategy and deepened our commitment to cultivating trustworthy learning infrastructures and interdependent relationships between collecting organizations around the world.”