Mellon Higher Learning Program

Important Notes

Notice: The Office of Foundation Relations is the designated institutional contact responsible for communicating with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is collaborating with Limited Submissions on the internal downselect process.

Applicants are encouraged to contact  Katherine Totino , Associate Director of Foundation Relations (kxf188@psu.edu) to gain insight into the Foundation’s strategic priorities, the specific goals of this program, and key elements that have characterized successful applications in the past.

---

 

The Mellon Foundation invites institutions of higher education to submit applications for research and/or curricular projects focused on either of the following two areas:

Unruly Intelligences

 

The emergence of generative AI has triggered a firestorm of techno-utopian promises and apocalyptic predictions alike. These reckonings often imply that AI is "intelligent" in the human sense, even though from the iconic use of this term in his 1950 "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" Alan Turing called this attitude "dangerous" and famously defined artificial intelligence only in terms of how well computers could imitate human thought. Are we now facing an existential abdication of human capacities to machines? Or the usual evolution of how we define intelligence in keeping with our shifting technologies? Meanwhile, the terms of human and more-than-human intelligences are also unstable, with greater or lesser value assigned to particular populations, species, and objects according to our historical, social, and ecological contexts. How might different forms of AI – generative, predictive, agentic, and others, including models that are currently still theoretical – complicate or exacerbate the inequalities that arise from these norms? With so much at stake, the humanities have an urgent role to play in shaping contemporary understanding of artificial and other intelligences – and in making practical, informed recommendations about how to regulate and/or adopt AI in our learning, work, and most intimate lives.

Projects might investigate:

• the meanings of intelligence;

• the effects of different conceptions of intelligence on (or their emergence from) democratic processes, human subjectivities, probability and prediction, and aesthetic and cultural taste;

• the social and cultural impacts of specific forms of AI, as seen through discrete analytical or disciplinary lenses (such as disability studies, gender and sexuality studies, environmental justice studies, and ethnic studies); or

• any of the above, using comparative analyses that address how computational and non-computational understandings of intelligence take into account, for example, attention, dignity, embodiment, expertise, faith, justice, pleasure, serendipity, and surprise.

 

Normalization and Its Discontents 
The concept of normalcy is paradoxical. It entails the statistically average that is at the same time a moral imperative, a completely ordinary state that is nonetheless much to be desired, a cultural ideal. Moreover, the normal often functions as the ideal even when it is not numerically average. Despite the seemingly universal character of these formulations, the normal entered Western consciousnesses only in the modern era with the nineteenth-century efflorescence of 9 statistics, bringing with it its opposite: the deviant, exceptional, aberrant, not normal. How does the concept of normalcy govern notions of human life, and when doesn’t it? What are the structures and systems that keep it in place, in realms as disparate as the aesthetic, socioeconomic, psychological, physiological, political, spiritual, and ethical? What, if anything, does the historical knowledge of its recent invention – and vigorous social rejections – enable?

This funding opportunity is overseen by Mellon’s Higher Learning program. Applications must be demonstrably grounded in the humanities and led by humanities scholars. Experimental methodologies, interdisciplinary and community collaboration, and pathways to informing campus and/or wider policies and practices are welcome.

 

Projects might investigate:

• comparative historical, geographic, and/or cultural treatments of the normal;

• normalcy and political contestation;

• the import of the normal within specific disciplinary approaches;

• the unspeakable, the taboo, and other deviances surreptitiously produced by a norm; or

• potential relationships between the normal and the utopian.

Applications must be demonstrably grounded in the humanities and led by humanities scholars. Experimental methodologies, interdisciplinary and community collaboration, and pathways to informing campus and/or wider policies and practices are welcome.

Institutions are limited to submitting no more than three concepts by the application deadline. Finalists will be selected and invitations for full proposals will be issued during the summer of 2026, with final grant recommendations presented for prospective approval no later than November 2026, for a December 1, 2026 start date—and potentially sooner.
Higher Learning’s Open Call for Concepts supports inquiry into issues of vital social, cultural, and historical import. Projects should engage teams of scholars and/or students, and have visible, enduring impact at the institution.

Key Dates 

• Registration deadline: December 1, 2025 by 3:00 p.m. ET
• Application deadline: February 17, 2026 by 3:00 p.m. ET
• Application status notification: Summer 2026

Funding and Duration

Envisioned projects should be achievable with contributions from Mellon of $250,000–$500,000. Grants will start on the first day of the month following approval and may have durations of up to four years. (For example, grants approved in October 2026 will start on November 1, 2026, and should end by October 31, 2030.)

Eligibility

Principal Investigator

The Principal Investigator (PI), or applicant, must be a faculty member and/or dean in a program or department in the humanities or humanistic social sciences at the applicant institution. The PI may also be the institution’s provost/chief academic officer.

To confirm eligibility for this funding opportunity and gain access to the application form, all interested applicants must directly submit a completed registration form by December 1, 2025.

Once eligible applicants are confirmed, the institution should coordinate with the relevant office that manages grant applications, such as the Office of Sponsored Projects or Foundation Relations, and run an internal competition among eligible applicants. Through this internal competition, institutions should select up to three applications to then submit to Mellon by February 17, 2026. Each institution may submit no more than three applications to Mellon for consideration.

Eligible Fields of Study

Please note that this list may not comprise every eligible discipline for this call for concepts.

American Studies

Ancient Civilizations

Anthropology (excluding physical anthropology) and Archaeology

Architecture (historical or theoretical focus)

Area Studies (humanities focus)

Art History

Classics

Communication (theoretical focus)

Comparative Literature

Comparative Religion

Cultural Studies

Digital Humanities

English

Environmental Studies: The study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.

Ethics

Ethnic Studies

Film, Cinema and Media Studies (theoretical focus)

Foreign Languages and Literatures, both ancient and modern

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Geography (excluding physical geography)

History

History of Science/Science Studies

Interdisciplinary Studies: Interdisciplinary areas of study may be eligible if they have one or more eligible fields at their core.

Linguistics (social or cultural focus)

Literature

Medieval Studies

Musicology, Ethnomusicology and Music Theory

Performance Studies (theoretical focus)

Philosophy

Political Theory

Religious Studies

Rhetoric

Sociology (qualitative)

Theater (theoretical focus)

Urban Studies

 

Allowed Expenditures 

Grant awards may be used for purposes such as (but not limited to):

• Course releases for participating faculty (alternatively, faculty stipends or salary supplements will be considered on a case-by-case basis)

• Course development funds

• Funds for the implementation of experimental projects

• Funds to support costs associated with workshops and reading, discussion, and/or action groups

• Travel and convening expenses, such as speaker honoraria, catering, and caregiving expenses

• Undergraduate research fellowships/stipends

• Equipment necessary to the undertaking of the project

• Up to 10 percent of funds to program operational administrative and occupancy costs directly tied to the grant-funded activities

Disallowed Expenditures 

Grant awards may not be used for purposes such as (but not limited to):

• Overhead and indirect costs (However, up to 10% of grant funds may be used for administrative and occupancy costs directly tied to the grant-funded activities.

• Capital and equipment costs

• Postdoctoral fellowships

• Undergraduate tuition or scholarships, financial aid, or study abroad opportunities

• Graduate student tuition

• Real estate

• Business class travel

• Projects grounded primarily in the quantitative social sciences or STEM fields

• Projects with a primarily international focus (Any international aspect of the proposed intellectual work must be pursued in a comparative fashion alongside US-oriented content.)

• Support for K-12 education

• Support for lobbying activity or similar attempts to influence local, state, or federal legislation

• Activities to influence the outcome of any election of any candidate for public office or to conduct a voter registration drive