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Moore Research Fellowship

Unfortunately, we will not be distributing Moore Research Fellowships in 2021 due to COVID-19 and the extended closure of the Swarthmore College campus. We hope to offer the fellowships again in early 2022. In the meanwhile, FHL is being more flexible and accommodating of scanning requests while our library is closed. Please email requests to friends@swarthmore.edu

The Margaret W. Moore and John M. Moore Research Fellowship promotes research during the academic year or summer months using the resources of the Friends Historical Library and/or the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, providing a stipend to support such research. See below to read about the past Moore Fellows. Strong preference will be given to projects making significant use of resources only available on site at Swarthmore College.​

2020 Application Instructions

This opportunity is for outside applicants or Swarthmore faculty or staff. Current Swarthmore students are eligible for the Moore Student Fellowship.

A stipend in the amount of $1,200 per week, for a minimum of two weeks and a maximum of six weeks will be available.  Those eligible to apply include Swarthmore College students, faculty and staff, as well as faculty, graduate students, or scholars at all levels from outside the Swarthmore College community. Fellows are required to give a brief, informal presentation about their research to library staff on the last day of their research trip. 

Applications should include the following, combined into a single PDF document and emailed to ccauste1@swarthmore.edu:

  1. A description of your project and its importance to the field. This must include specific references to the resources to be consulted at Friends Historical Library (FHL) and/or the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (SCPC). Applicants who have not previously used either collection may wish to consult with Curators Wendy Chmielewski (SCPC) peacecollection@swarthmore.edu and/or Jordan Landes friends@swarthmore.edu about library resources. The project description should state the anticipated publication or dissemination of research results. Applicants working on projects utilizing resources available on microfilm or in digital format should state why they would need to see the original material or view the analog formats on site. The project description should also state the number of weeks (two weeks minimum, six weeks maximum, carrying a stipend of $1,200 per week) the applicant wishes to spend at Swarthmore.
  2. A current vitae or resume. 
  3. A short writing sample (an article or book chapter). 
  4. Names and current mailing and email addresses of three references familiar with both the field in which the applicant proposes to work, and with the applicant’s work. Please inform your references that they could be contacted.

Application packets must be combined into a single PDF document and emailed to Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, ccauste1@swarthmore.edu. The application deadline is March 15, 2020 March 31, 2020. The name of award recipient(s) will be announced April 15, 2020. Fellowship research must be completed between June 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021. 

Questions about the application process may be directed to Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, ccauste1@swarthmore.edu.

Olatunde Taiwo, Olabisi Onabanjo University (Nigeria), 2019

Isabelle Cosgrave, University of Exeter (UK), 2018

Doug Gwyn, Durham Friends Meeting (Maine), 2016

Olatunde Taiwo, Olabisi Onabanjo University (Nigeria), 2019

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List of Some Past Moore Fellows

2019
Sa'ed Atshan (Swarthmore College), "Alienation and Belonging Among Black and Palestinian Friends"
Garrett Felber (University of Mississippi), “From Prisons to Freedom Rides: How Prison Abolition Shaped the Civil Rights Movement.”
Christina Larocco (Historical Society of Pennsylvania), Martha Schofield (1839–1916)
Carolyn Levy (Penn State), "Prisoners and Their Matrons: Incarceration and Reform in Nineteenth-Century America"
Olatunde Taiwo (Olabisi Onabanjo University), "Friend(ship) Across the Sahara: Quakerism in Africa Since 1855"

2018
Ruth Braunstein (University of Connecticut), "The Moral Meaning of Taxes: Taxpayers, Tax Resisters and the Construction of Good Citizenship" 
Jon Coburn (Newcastle University), "Summers of Peace and Justice: US Women's Peace Encampments in the 1980s"
Isabelle Cosgrave (University of Exeter), "Balancing Literary Ambition and Quaker Commitment: Amelia Opie and Mary Howitt Negotiate Shifting Quaker Attitudes in Nineteenth-Century Britain"
Isaac May (University of Virginia), "God-Optional Religion: Quaker, Unitarians, Jews and the Changing Nature of Theism, 1920-1965"

2017
Shuko Tamao

2016 
Doug Gwyn (Durham Friends Meeting (ME)), Friends General Conference Gathering since 1900

2015
Paula R. Palmer (Boulder Friends Meeting), Quaker Indian Boarding Schools

2014
No Fellowship awarded

2013
Jessica M. Frazier (PhD Candidate, Binghamton University), "U.S. Women’s Transnational Activism"

2012 
Amanda Quakenbush Guidotti (University of Delaware), "The Spirit Awakens: Evangelicalism and the Transformation of American Quakerism"

2011 
Aaron Wunsch (University of Pennsylvania), Quaker burial practices

2010  
Brian E. McNeil, (PhD Candidate, University of Texas at Austin), "Frontiers of Need: Humanitarianism and the American Involvement in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970"

2009
No Fellowship awarded

2008
Michael Goode (Graduate Student, University of Illinois at Chicago), "In the Kingdom but Not of It: The Quaker Peace Testimony and Atlantic Pennsylvania, 1689-1714."

2007
Suzanne Kelley McCormack (Visiting Professor, Wheaton College), "American Prisoners of War and the Vietnam War-Era Peace Movement" 

2006
James M.Donahue (University of Notre Dame), "Transnational Protestantism and the League of Nations, 1914-1948"

2005
Stephanie Patterson Gilbert (Graduate Student, American Studies Penn State University, Harrisburg), “Childbearing Cycles and Family Limitation in an Eighteenth-Century Affluent Household: The Fertility Transition of Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker and Her Daughters”

2004           
Carol Faulkner (Assistant Professor, History Department, State University of New York at Geneseo), “Lucretia Mott and the Politics of 19th Century Reform” 

2003
Deborah Bishov ’04 (Senior Thesis, History Department, Swarthmore College),  “The War Resisters League” 

2002        
A. Glenn Crothers (Assistant Professor, History Department, Indiana University Southeast), “Negotiating Communities and Cultures: Quakers and Slavery in Early National Northern Virginia”              

2001 
Amy Schneidhorst (Graduate Student, History Department, University of Illinois-Chicago), “Sisters in the Struggle: Older Women’s Activism for Peace and Social Justice in Chicago, 1960 – 1975”  
Charles E. Fager (Independent Quaker Scholar), “Exploration of the roots, major themes, and evolution of religious thought (or theology) in FGC Quakerism, from its beginning through the 20th century”