As of this fall, the Stanford Humanities Center’s cohort of fellows is the largest of any humanities institution in the U.S.

Founded in 1980 to support advanced research in areas ranging from history to philosophy to literature and more, the Stanford Humanities Center hosts about 50 fellows and about 50 public events per year. The center hosted less than 10 fellows annually when it launched, most of whom came from Stanford’s faculty; its membership has grown in years since, and starting this school year, the center is hosting 12 postdoctoral scholars through the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities program.

Fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center as a whole are targeted at a wide mix of scholars: Stanford undergraduates and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and faculty from both within and beyond Stanford may all apply. Scholars affiliated with the institute have gone on to win a medley of prestigious awards, from Pulitzers to so-called “genius grants” from the MacArthur Foundation.

Research by former fellows ranges broadly, examining everything from the moral weight of contributing to global warming to education in North and South Korea following the Korean war.

“Mixing all of those people at different stages of their career and across a range of academic disciplines is where the magic of the Humanities Center lies,” Caroline Winterer, director of the center and Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities, told Stanford News.

“The cross-fertilization of ideas is essential to cutting-edge research,” she added.

Contact Hannah Knowles at hknowles ‘at’ stanford.edu.