Call for Applications

2025 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship

 

Call for Applications

2025 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship

Deadline:
November 17, 2024 (for Spring 2025 residency)
or March 30, 2025 (for Summer or Fall 2025 residency)

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students and USC graduate students for the 2025 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship.

The fellowship provides $1,500 support for USC undergraduate students or $3,000 support for USC graduate students doing research focused on the testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and/or other related USC resources and collections. The fellowship is open to USC undergraduate students and graduate students of all disciplines.

The Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow will be expected to spend a period in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. Students may propose to conduct their research during Spring 2025 (10 hours of research per week for 15 weeks per semester), Summer 2025 (one month), or Fall 2025 (10 hours of research per week for 15 weeks per semester). The Lev Student Research Fellow will be expected to play a role in the activities of the Center and to give a public presentation based on their work and findings during the following academic year (2025-2026).

Award decisions for the fellowship will be based on the originality of the research proposal and the centrality of USC resources to the research project.

The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive is a collection of over 57,000 audiovisual testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, including the Rwandan, Armenian, Guatemalan, Cambodian genocides, the Nanjing Massacre in China, anti-Rohingya mass violence, and war and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The majority of testimonies are life history interviews in which interviewees discuss their lives before, during, and after genocide and mass violence. With interviews conducted in 70 countries and in 37 languages, testimonies capture both the individual experience of mass violence and the social and cultural history of the 20th century on a global scale. Learn more about the Visual History Archive here.

In addition to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, other internationally unique and growing research resources at USC include the extensive Holocaust and genocide studies collection at USC Libraries, which contains 30,000 primary and secondary sources including the original transcripts of the Nuremberg trials and the materials of the New York Life Insurance settlement regarding the Armenian genocide. Unique primary sources in the Special Collections at USC include the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, which also houses the private papers of dozens of emigrants from the Third Reich, as well as private collections from Jewish Holocaust survivors and liberators.

For students who wish to conduct research in Spring 2025, the deadline for applications is November 17, 2024.

For students who wish to conduct research in Summer or Fall 2025, the deadline for applications is March 30, 2025.

To submit an application:

Email the materials below to cagr@usc.edu or submit them electronically to the Fellowships page of the Center’s website. (Visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/cagr/fellowships/lev-fellowship/ and click Apply.)

  • cover letter (including proposed dates of residency)
  • current CV
  • research proposal (1-3 pages), which should include a project outline and description of methodology
  • recommendation letter from a faculty advisor (Your advisor may also submit the recommendation letter directly to cagr@usc.edu.)

For questions, please contact cagr@usc.edu.

Read about the Center’s past Lev Student Research Fellows here: 20182019202020212022, 2023

Read more about their projects here: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2023

For more information about the Center, please visit our website here.

Download the Call for Applications here.