STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS
due SUNDAY 7 APRIL 2024, 11:59pm ET
Applicants submit materials HERE.
Thesis advisor submit letter of recommendation HERE.
The ICMA offers grants for graduate students in the early stages of their dissertation research, enabling beginning scholars to carry out foundational investigations at archives and sites. Winners will be granted $3,000, and if needed, officers of the ICMA will contact institutions and individuals who can help the awardees gain access to relevant material. Three grants are awarded per year, and they are designed to cover one month of travel.
The grants are primarily for students who have finished preliminary exams, and are in the process of refining dissertation topics. Students who have already submitted a proposal, but are still very early on in the process of their research, may also apply.
All applicants must be ICMA members.
Applicants must submit:
Outline of the thesis proposal in 800 words or less.
Detailed outline of exactly which sites and/or archives are to be visited, which works will be consulted, and how this research relates to the proposed thesis topic. If you hope to see extremely rare materials or sites with restricted access, please be as clear as possible about contacts with custodians already made.
Proposed budget (airfare, lodging, other travel, per diem). Please be precise and realistic. The total need not add up to $3,000 precisely. The goal is for reviewers to see how you will handle the expenses.
Letter from the thesis advisor, clarifying the student’s preparedness for the research, the significance of the topic, and the relevance of the trip to the thesis.
A curriculum vitae.
Upon return, the student will be required to submit a letter and financial report to the ICMA and a narrative to the student section of the Newsletter.
Applications are due by SUNDAY 7 APRIL 2024, 11:59pm ET. The ICMA will announce the winners of the three grants at the Spring Board Meeting in May.
NOTES ON FILE SUBMISSION: Please upload PDFs when possible (.jpg, .png also accepted) with the file named as LAST NAME first, then the item. Example: SMITHcv.pdf, SMITHbudget.pdf, SMITHthesis.pdf, etc.
Similarly, please notify the thesis advisor to name the file as STUDENT LAST NAME first, then the item. Example: SMITHletter.pdf
Applicants submit materials HERE.
Thesis advisor submit letter of recommendation HERE.
Email questions to Ryan Frisinger at awards@medievalart.org. The winning applications will be chosen by members of the ICMA Grants and Awards Committee, which is chaired by our Vice-President.
RECENT RECIPIENTS
2023
Elliot Mackin (University of Pennsylvania/Department of the History of Art): “Seeing Christ Queerly: Power, Pleasure, and the Body in Byzantine Art.”
Liz Wells (University of California - Irvine): “Rex Offeret: Transcultural Kingship and the Visuality of Power in the Early Medieval Mediterranean”
Margaret Wilson (The Ohio State University/History of Art): “Making and Breaking Enclosure: The Movement of Objects through Late-Medieval Convents.
2022
Arvin Maghsoudlou (Southern Methodist University/Department of Near Eastern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art): “Sasanian and post-Sasanian Silver Vessels: New Approaches to the Arts of the Iranian World during Late Antiquity”
Sarah Mathiesen (Florida State University): “Yılanlı Kilise: Meaning and Identity in a Byzantine Rock-Cut Church”
Mina Miyamoto (University of Salzburg): “Precious Textiles as Curtains in Medieval Manuscripts”
2021
Michelle Al-Ferzly (University of Michigan): “‘Adab Oblige’: The Art of Medieval Islamic Dining, 850-1450”
Ryan Eisenman (University of Pennsylvania): “Opera et Labora: The Limoges Champlevé Enamel Industry, 1100-1400”
Teresa Martínez (University of Warwick), “Masons’ Marks and the Construction of Social History in Medieval Zamora (11th-13th c.)”
Caitlin Mims (Florida State University), “Practical Magic: Hystera Amulets and Healing in the Middle Byzantine Period”
2020
Britt Hunter (Florida State University), “The Wellcome Apocalypse (London, Wellcome Library MS 49): An Intersection of Tradition and Innovation in a Late Fifteenth-century, German Multi-Text Manuscript”
Angelica Verduci (Case Western Reserve University), late medieval macabre imagery; the Triumph of Death imagery
Elena Gittleman (Bryn Mawr College), “Legacies of Ancient Theater in Middle Byzantine Visual Culture (ca. 843-1204)”
2019
Aimee Caya (Case Western University), “Brazen Bodies: the Materiality and Reception of Monumental Brasses in England, 1300-1550”
Erin Kate Grady (University of North Carolina), “O admirandus apium fervor!: Allegory and the Bee in Southern Italian Exultet Scrolls"
Meseret Oldjira (Princeton), “Commemoration and Community: Illuminated Gospel Manuscripts in Monastic Ethiopia, 1280-1350”
2018
Nava Streiter (Bryn Mawr), “Bodies and Books: Gesture and Posture in Middle Byzantine Manuscripts”
Sam Barber (Cornell), “Imperii decora facies: Palaces and Power in the Early Middle Ages”
Amanda Doviak (University of York), “At Cross Purposes? Sacred and Secular Figural Iconography of the High Cross in the Northern Danelaw, c. 850-1000”
2017
Ariel Fein (Yale), research on the church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio in Palermo
Laura Leeker (Ohio State), research on visual programs of fourteenth-century Italian mendicant chapter houses
Arielle Winnik (Bryn Mawr), “Burial Dress and Christian-Muslim Encounters in the Eastern Mediterranean, 900-1400”