The Medici Archive Project is offering graduate fellowships.

See the announcement below:

SAMUEL FREEMAN CHARITABLE TRUST
Five Short-Term Graduate Fellowships (2014)

The Medici Granducal Archive (Mediceo del Principato), comprising over four million letters dating between 1537-1743, provides the most complete record of any princely regime in early modern Italy as well as an extraordinarily rich historical reservoir of European history. This collection offers an incomparable panorama of human history, expressed through the words of the people most immediately involved, opening new windows onto the political, diplomatic, gastronomic, economic, artistic, scientific, military and medical culture of early modern Tuscany and Europe.
The Medici Archive Project (MAP) wishes to provide graduate and doctoral students from diverse disciplines with the opportunity to have exposure to original source materials and training in their use. For this reason MAP is offering five short-term fellowships sponsored by the SAMUEL FREEMAN CHARITABLE TRUST (SFCF) for graduate students in any field of the humanities or social sciences who are in the early stages of their dissertation work. The SFCF fellowships have been developed to enable students working on their dissertations to conduct primary research using the Mediceo del Principato and other collections housed in the Archivio di Stato in Florence.
This scholarly residence will be of considerable benefit in helping the students to gain the necessary skills, experience and confidence to continue independent academic research in the later stages of their graduate trajectory. While undertaking primary research for their dissertation in the Florentine state archives, the Fellows will benefit from the supervision of the MAP Staff, academics drawn from a variety of disciplines who are experts in archival research, paleography and the digital humanities. The Fellows will also have the opportunity to expand their academic networks through contact with the many international scholars who regularly visit and collaborate with MAP. Finally, Fellows will be enrolled in the annual MAP Archival Studies Seminar.
The fellowships last for an uninterrupted period of two-and-a-half months, taking place at any point between 1 January 2014 and 15 July 2014. The SFCT Fellows will undertake their dissertation research on-site in the Archivio di Stato.
The candidates will have the following qualifications: a completed M.Phil (or equivalent) in any field of early modern humanities and fluency in English and Italian. Preference will be given to those applicants whose dissertation topic is immediately relevant to the content of these archives.
The stipend is $5,000 plus an allowance for travel expenses. To apply for this fellowship, the following material should be sent electronically to Elena Brizio (ebrizio@medici.org):

1) A copy of the candidate’s dissertation proposal (or a final draft).
2) A short essay (two pages maximum) on how a candidate’s topic will benefit from archival research.
3) A complete and up-to-date curriculum vitae.
4) The name and email address of one scholar, preferably the candidate’s supervisor, who can comment on the applicant’s qualifications and the merits of the research proposal (please do not include letters of recommendation with the application).

The application deadline is: 15 December 2013 at noon.
Please note:
1) All materials submitted by the applicant should be in English.
2) All materials should be in a single .pdf file.
3) Please do not include supplementary material (publications, papers, etc.).

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Dr. Elena Brizio
Vice Director
The Medici Archive Project
ebrizio@medici.org