In partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLI), the leading non-profit organisation for history education for schools and the general public, the RAI is able to offer special awards each year for research in archives in the New York area.
Aim of the Prize
The RAI-Gilder Lehrman Fellows’ awards are open to undergraduate and graduate students. Awardees will receive the RAI’s travel award as described above; in addition, the GLI will aim to provide free access to the New-York Historical Society, the digital archive of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, and use of a desk if/as available at the Institute’s offices on W. 45th St., New York. GLI will also advise awardees on visiting speakers and programmes on American history across New York City and offer them information about archives in NYC as well as introductions, as appropriate, to curators and historians in their field of research.
Should the awardees’ research visits to New York coincide with one of the five major annual award presentations sponsored by the GLI (Frederick Douglass Book Prize; George Washington Prize; Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize; Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History; National History Teachers of the Year Awards), they would be welcome to attend as a guest.
Selection process
There is no special application process for the RAI-Gilder Lehrman awards. Applicants should apply for a postgraduate or undergraduate award as above, and recipients of the RAI-Gilder Lehrman awards will be selected from among the successful candidates.
“The RAI Travel Award funded an extended visit to New York where I was able to visit many archives otherwise inaccessible to me. In particular, the resources at the New York Academy of Medicine and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture were completely invaluable to my project. Going through my notes and files from the archives I visited I am always surprised at the richness and diversity of the source material the RAI Travel Award funded archive trip allowed me to access. My project has been greatly enriched as a result.”
Ella St George Carey, RAI travel grant recipient
