The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict prevention funds a wide range of proposals for research and teaching on genocide and mass violence, their causes and consequences, conflict prevention and resolution, dialogue, peace, and the roots of hatred and discrimination. AUP faculty, staff and students (both undergraduate and graduate) from all disciplines are eligible to apply for Schaeffer Fellowships to support research, curricular development, pedagogy, research travel, as well as for developing innovative strategies for disseminating findings and communicating with the public. 

Applications are due mid-October and mid-February yearly. Please note that the review process takes place after each deadline. Proposals must be submitted at least two months in advance of the project start date. If your request for a grant is time sensitive, please apply for funding in the previous grant cycle.

 

Applicants are asked to submit a personal narrative regarding their project, between 1 – 3 single spaced pages. This should include the following: 

  • the fit of the proposal with the Center’s mission. 

  • the value of the proposed activity to the Center, in terms of its academic visibility and credibility. 

  • the academic merit of the proposed activity. 

  • the personal connection and dedication to the research topic. 

  • Expected results or deliverables 

  • How the results will be communication 

  • If the project involves human subjects it needs to be approved by the Ethics Committee or other appropriate means. 

 

The Center is particularly interested in proposals that: 

  • further the Center’s mission. 

  • include the intensive use of the Visual History Archive or the Fortunoff Archive   

  • make an impact on the public’s understanding of the causes and consequences of genocide and other forms of mass violence. 

 

Alongside the personal narrative, the application should contain a budget, breaking down the expected expenses.  

 

For students, a letter of support from a faculty member is also necessary.  Furthermore, for applications involving research projects, students need to schedule a meeting with an AUP librarian and hand in a confirmation letter or email from the librarians that this meeting took place.

 

We are especially interested in creative faculty-student collaborative research projects and curricular proposals that address the causes and consequences of genocide and mass violence. 

Fellowships have been awarded for internships, conferences, new research, internships and more. For additional information on the types of projects we fund, please scroll down to see examples of previous awards and look at the application form with further information about the documents required to apply.  

  

APPLICATION 

To apply for a student or faculty fellowship, please fill out this form to upload a project narrative, a letter of support, a confirmation note from a librarian, and a budget proposal. Only complete applications will be considered for funding. 

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER to stay updated on deadlines.

 

Past Fellows

2022 - 2023 Fellows

Student Fellowships

Stephanie Bergon

Title: Toolkit and Standards in Transnational Justice Conference

Major:

 

Armen Abelyan

Title: Sustainable Armenia: Ecological and Cultural Sustainability in the 21st Century

Major: MSIM Program

Johan Sebastian Febres Cordero Moscoso

Title: Asylum Court Internship

Major:

 

Eliza Schwartz

Title: Post-Mabo Australia: The Impacts of Native Title Rights on the Cultural Heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People

Major: History, Law and Society

Faculty Fellowships

Kerstin Carlson

Title: Toolkit and Standards in Transnational Justice Conference

Professor of History and Politics

 

Sharon Weill

Title: Indigenous Customary Law, State Justice and Politics: The Case of New Caledonia

Professor of History and Politics

 

Hannah Taieb

Title: Dialogue and Collaboration in Prison Education

Professor of History and Politics

 

Kerstin Carlson

Title: New Legal Categories in Colombia’s Transitional Justice Institution, the JEP

Professor of History and Politics

Susan Perry

Title: UN OHCHR

Professor of History and Politics

 

Sharon Weill

Title: Terrorist Trials

Professor of History and Politics

 

Waddick Doyle

Title: Understanding Afghanistan

Professor of Global Communications

2021 - 2022 Fellows

Student Fellowships

Chantz Norris

Major: International and Comparative Politics

Title: Conference "The Photography of Persecution: Pictures of the Holocaust"

 

Morgan Phillips

Major: Psychology

Title: Schaeffer Ukraine Forum

Fatimata Atty Germaine Djibrine

Major: International and Comparative Politics

Title: NGO Practicum in Senegal

 

Mitchell Rutledge

Major: History, Law and Society

Title: "Reform and the Role of Women in Contemporary Islam"

Faculty Fellowships

Susan Perry, Professor of History and Politics, Program Director MAs in International Affairs

Title: AUP Module. Title of Module: Cambodia-War and Resilience

Sharon Weil, Associate Professor of History and Politics

Title: Indigenous Customary Law, State Justice and Politics: The case of New Caledonia

2019 - 2021 Fellows

Student Fellowships

Mary Bickel

Major: MA International Affairs

Title: Shipping as a means and a solution for the growing Conflict in the Arctic

Genevieve Bougher

Major: International and Comparative Politics

Title: Against the Norm: When Women Participated in the Rwandan Genocide

Adaeze Nwokolobia

Major: International and Comparative Politics and Philosophy, Politics and Economics

Title: Bridges and Borderlands

Faculty Fellowships

Julian Culp,  Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Title: Lectures on Historical Justice

Marie Regan, filmmaker and Associate Professor of Communication Media and Culture

Title: Listen: Speak

Sharon Weil, Associate Professor of History and Politics

Title: Fighting for Peace: The Actors and Obstacles in Colombia’s Transitional Justice Process

2018 - 19 Fellows

Students Fellowships

Sanae Alouazen
Major: International and Comparative Politics
Title: Gender, violence and the colonial project: The case of Algeria

Alexandra Avena
Major: Msc International Management
Title: Geneva International Model UN 2019 Annual Conference

Kelly Demjanick
Major: International Affairs
Title: Justice and Peace: An Examination of Ad Hoc Tribunals in their ability to Facilitate Conflict Prevention

Andee Gershenberg
Major: MA International Affairs
Title: The Experiences of Migrant Women Accessing Higher Education in the Ile-de-France

Gabriel Green
Major: International and Comparative Politics & International Law
Title: Island of Despair: A case study of Lesvos and how EU policies have impacted asylum seekers on the 'doorstep of Europe'

Courtney Kelly
Major: MA Diplomacy and International Law
Title: UN Global Youth Summit

Amy Oloo
Major: MA International Affairs
Title: Internship with the World Federalist Movement & Institute for Global Policy

Faculty Fellowships

Kerstin Carlson, Associate Professor of International and Comparative Politics, “The Justice Laboratory: Hybrid Court for South Sudan”.

Professor Carlson was awarded travel funding to conduct interviews in Addis Ababa and Djibouti in relation to a book chapter on South Sudan and the hybrid court to try atrocity crimes called for in the peace accords.

Julian Culp, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, “Regional Distribution as a Distinct Criterion in ICC Prosecution”.

Professor Culp invited Professor Jiewuh Song of Seoul National University to give a talk to the AUP community. In his lecture, Professor explored the present legitimation crisis of the International Criminal Court.  His presentation contributed to  a better, critical understanding of the institutional mechanisms that are currently in place for legally sanctioning crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Michelle Kuo, Assistant Professor of History, Law and Society, “Migrants, Detention and the Right to Seek Asylum in South Texas."

Jula Wildberger, Professor of Comparative Literature and English. Lecture by Dagmar Kiesel on "Patterns of Invalidation in Augustine's approach to therapeutic and pastoral care."

Dagmar Kiesel teaches and researches at the University of Erlangen, Germany. Her research focuses on questions of ethics, personal identity, and gender, especially in the work of Augustine and Nietzsche. demonstrates very clearly how ancient discourse may shape even now the way in which we look at and treat the victims of atrocities.

Miranda Spieler, Assistant Professor of History. Visit from film director Khary Jones to AUP.

Film maker Khary Jones has been invited to speak at AUP and host a viewing of his film Where the Pavement Ends. This film tackles the subject of police brutality, racial discrimination and the senseless killing of unarmed black people in the U.S.

Albert Wu, Assistant Professor of History, “Taiwan's White Terror in History and Memory.”

2017 - 18 Fellows

Student Fellowships

Maxine Basch
MA, International Affairs
Title: Anti-Semitism in 21st Century France

Jessica Brainos
MA, Diplomacy and International Law
Title: Jewish Russian Women Survivors of the Holocaust who Migrated to Poland before WWII

Andee Gershenberg
Major: Psychology
Title: Consistency and Change in the Holocaust Testimonies over Time

Brittany Paquay
Major: History, Law and Society
Title: Humility in Action: Christianity and Civilian Rescue During the Holocaust

Isabelle Siege
Major: History Law and Society
Title: Award to study the Yiddish language

Faculty Fellowships

Marie Regan, Associate Professor of Film, Translating Atrocity: A Feature Documentary

In this project, I will be talking to translators who work in international criminal court tribunals, translating the testimony of survivors and perpetrators. The goal of the film, in of making the language, and the attempt to process the language central, is to use it as a prism to for exploring witness and the challenge listening in our times.

Lissa Lincoln, Associate Professor, Program Coordinator for Gender, Sexuality & Society, Order of Violence

The conference Orders of Violence was dedicated to investigating political violence, exclusion and memory within marginalized communities, with particular emphasis on caste violence and genocide.

Waddick Doyle, Co-existence: media hate speech and inter-communal realities in Paris

This project involves studying the origins of ethnic and religious conflict in media discourses particularly those promoted by social media. It then examines and documents the reality of co-existence on the ground in particular institutions, school canteens, hospitals, perhaps prisons, associations and religious organizations. 

Kerstin Carlson, Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Politics, The Habré Trial and Beyond: New Models of Prosecuting International Crime?

This book project, conducted in concert with human rights researchers from the University of California, Berkeley (Kim Thuy Seelinger) and Sciences Po (Sharon Weill), examines the impact of the Habré trial on justice organs and actors. Hissène Habré is the ex-president of Chad who oversaw what a 1992 Chadian Truth Commission termed a genocide against targeted ethnic groups in Chad while he was in power from 1982-1990. On May 30, 2016, the Chambres Africaines Extraordinaires Hissène Habré guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture, and sentenced him to life in prison.

Ziad Majed, Associate Professor of History, Syrie, la révolution orpheline

This book, published in 2014 in Arabic in Beirut and in French in Paris, has received a grant to be translated into English and updated to include a chapter on the rise of ISIS. 

‘It Happened Here’ with Sarah Gensburger, Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique – CNRS, in 2017-2018:

Five fellows of the Center have worked for the online project "It Happened Here". An immersive audio series, "It Happened Here" allows people to experience History in the city by exploring, through archives, a neighborhood, a street, a building and giving a voice to the people who lived there. During two summers, trained by historian and sociologist Sarah Gensburger and by the Center's postdoctoral fellow Constance Pâris de Bollardière, these AUP students have methodologically searched the Visual Archive Archive to find relevant audio material to document parts of the soundwalk on the Holocaust in Paris.

  • Basia Diagne (Summer 2018)
  • Lauren O'Farrell (Summer 2018)
  • Elin Rosedalen (Summer 2017)
  • Neni Asheeke (Summer 2017)
2016 - 17 Fellows

Student Fellowships

Shiri Salehin
MA in Public Policy and International Law 
Memorialization of the Shoah in France

Stephanie Alexander
MA in International Affairs
Title: Roots of Discrimination and the Reconstruction Era 1865 – 1877

Neni Asheeke & Elin Rosedalen
AUP fellows of the Gens de Paris project

Noémi Bodnàrová
Major: Psychology
Title: Identity Stories

Laurel Hiedewohl
Double Major: Psychology, International Business Administration
Title: Consistency and Changes in Holocaust Testimony Over Time

Andee Gershenberg
Major: Psychology
Title: Consistency and Changes in Holocaust Testimony Over Time

Stephanie Alexander
MA in International Affairs
Title: The Variance of African American Freedom between 1866-1896, Rights Language and the Historic Black Press

Vanessa Cardenas
MA in Diplomacy and International Law
Title: A Comparative Analysis of Survivor Testimony and Rape Prosecutions Under International Law

Stella Kim
MA in International Affairs and BA in International and Comparative Politics
Title: Japanese Imperial Genocide Sex Slavery (joint with Soyoung Park)

Soyoung Park
MA in International Affairs and BA in International and Comparative Politics
Title: Japanese Imperial Genocide Sex Slavery (joint with Stella Kim)

Yana Kotina
Major: Art History
Title: Anslem Kiefer and Paul Celan, or the Contemporary Perception of Art and Poetry after the Holocaust

Raven Gaddy 
MA in International Affairs
Title: Trauma: The Hidden Cost of Humanitarian Law

Sheena Dass
MA in International Affairs
Title: Contextualization of Persecution and Genocide within an International Legal Framework

Rachel Fallon
MA in International Affairs
Title: War and Peace, Art and Empathy

Kendra Mills
Major: History, Law and Society 
Title: Rwandan Women and Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Stefanie Kundakjian
MA International Affairs, Conflict Resolution, and Civil Society Development
Title 1: Living Assets, Transferred Wealth: The Value of Armenian Women at the End of the Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Era
Title 2: Living Assets: Inherited Values from the Armenian Genocide Reflected in Tradition and Status Quo

Marie Robin
Major: History
Title: An Investigation of the Meaning of Genocidal Rape: How Tutsi Women Construct the Story of their Rape.

Hannah V. Johnson, Hannah M. Gressler and David L. Mueller

Student fellowships awarded to attend the Library of Congress with Prof. Roy Rosenstein. Their research investigated the denazification of occupied Germany after the war. The grant helped fund these students trip to visit the Holocaust Museum and the National Archives in Washington DC.