Awards Recognize Excellence in Humanities and Social Sciences Research

The Ohio State University is proud to announce that Theodora Dragostinova has been awarded a 2025 ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The longest running program at the organization, ACLS Fellowships support outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

After four years of restricting ACLS Fellowships to early-career scholars due to the impact of COVID-19, the 2024 competition was re-opened to scholars across all career stages. Dragostinova has been recognized as one of 62 outstanding scholars from a pool of over 2,300 applicants through a multi-stage peer review process.

ACLS Fellowships provide up to $60,000 to support scholars for six to 12 months of full-time research and writing. Awardees who are independent scholars, adjunct faculty, or have teaching-intensive roles receive an additional stipend between $3,000 and $6,000.

Dragostinova’s research reconstructs the itineraries of displaced children and divided families in the Balkan borderlands in the aftermath of World War I. Her book project analyzes what the repatriation of refugee children entailed and how postwar family reunification worked to interrogate overlapping questions of international norms, national sovereignty, and individual rights; shifting notions of citizenship and belonging; and gendered ideas of family life and agency.

“ACLS is grateful that we are in a position to continue to fund this vital research that advances our understanding of human societies and cultures,” said ACLS Vice President James Shulman. “Representing many different fields of study—including African diaspora studies, art history, English, gender studies, musicology, philosophy, religious studies, and more—this year’s fellows demonstrate the importance of foundational humanistic inquiry in helping us to understand a wide range of questions concerning our collective and varied histories, narratives, creations, and beliefs.”

The ACLS Fellowship Program is funded primarily by the ACLS endowment, which has benefited from the generous support of esteemed funders, institutional members, and individual donors since our founding in 1919.