Sustain the Program

50 Years of Original, Significant Research

The WW Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies has been supporting outstanding Ph.D. candidates since 1974. These Fellows, conducting original, significant, interdisciplinary research on women’s and gender issues, have gone on to grow and shape the field of women’s studies.

After nearly 50 years and more than 600 Fellows, the program has achieved tremendous success through a relatively modest financial investment. Imagine what we could do with more. Our ultimate goal is to sustain the program in perpetuity. Your help and that of other generous donors will enable us to strengthen and grow our commitment to supporting this important work.

“Even today, decades later,” says Dr. Estelle Freedman, one of the very first Women’s Studies Fellows, “for a student who is writing a dissertation that may now be related to transnational women’s studies, or queer studies, or trans studies—areas where they may not always have a long historiography, or they may not have the support in particular institutions—to have the Women’s Studies Fellowship supporting their work continues to be a stamp of legitimacy and a support beyond the monetary.

Kiana Murphy was awarded a Women’s Studies Fellowship in 2020 and is completing her dissertation in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania. She often looks to other scholars in the field to expand her own understandings. “The collaborative nature of women’s studies is what grounds me and my work, because this work is never an individual process,” said Ms. Murphy. “It’s a sea of ideas that you’re always building on.”

“Women and gender studies is a critical lens through which to see the world,” says 2020 Women’s Studies Fellow Barbara Sostaita. “It’s a method, it’s an approach, it’s a perspective, it’s a deconstruction.”

If you would like to make a gift, please use the online giving form below. If you know any potential funders who might invest in academic research of women’s and gender studies, please contact Beverly Sanford, Vice President and Secretary, at sanford@citizensandscholars.org.