Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship 2027–2028 (Creative Arts)

A year to write music with nothing else on your plate. Radcliffe fellows spend a full academic year in Cambridge, Massachusetts working on one ambitious project inside a deliberately mixed cohort of scientists, scholars, journalists and artists. Music composition sits within the Creative Arts application area.

Composers do not need a doctorate — a PhD or DMA is described as desirable but not required. What matters is strong evidence of achievement as a professional artist, with a record of recent performances. Anyone currently enrolled in a degree programme is ineligible, as are former Radcliffe fellows from 1999 onwards. There is no age or career-stage bar otherwise.

The award is a $78,000 stipend plus $5,000 for project expenses, with office or studio space in Byerly Hall, a Harvard visiting-fellow appointment and library and athletics access. Relocation, housing and childcare funds may be available. You must live in the Cambridge/Boston area from September through May and take part in the weekly fellows' talks and workshops — this is not a remote fellowship.

The application is a form, a CV, a 1,400-word project proposal, three letters of recommendation, and a work sample: one to three recent compositions on SoundCloud, Vimeo or YouTube, each accompanied by a written score unless the work is electronic or improvised.

Applications are read first by specialists in the field, then by a multidisciplinary committee weighing the project's quality and significance, the applicant's record or promise, and openness to cross-disciplinary conversation.