The Social Science Research Council is pleased to announce the details of its expanded and enhanced 2016–2017 InterAsia Program Transregional Research Fellowships program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Since 2012, the SSRC has offered a Transregional Research Fellowship program aimed at supporting and promoting excellence in transregional research under the rubric InterAsian Contexts and Connections. These fellowships serve to strengthen the understanding of issues and geographies that do not fit neatly into existing divisions of academia or the world and to develop new approaches, practices, and opportunities in international, regional, and area studies. In addition, the fellowships establish structures for linking scholars across disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Since its inception, the intellectual thrust of the program has been the reconceptualization of Asia as an interlinked historical and geographic formation stretching from West Asia through Eurasia, Central Asia, and South Asia to Southeast Asia and East Asia. Research proposals supported by the fellowships examine processes that connect places and peoples (such as migration, media, and resource flows) as well as those that reconfigure local and translocal contexts (such as shifting borders, urbanization, and social movements).

Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowships fellowships support junior scholars (one to five years out of the PhD) as they complete first books or undertake second projects. In addition to funding research, the fellowships create networks and shared resources that will support fellows well beyond the award period, providing promising scholars important support at critical junctures in their careers. In 2016, approximately twenty awards of up to $45,000 each will be awarded to scholars located in any world region. Award funds are to be disbursed flexibly over the period April 1, 2017–August 1, 2018.