DAACS Summer Institute at Monticello 2025
The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) at Monticello announces the DAACS Summer Institute, a four-week fellowship designed for archaeologists who wish to contribute data to DAACS or pursue sustained research, curation, and teaching using the DAACS database. DAACS is a web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archaeological research on enslavement throughout the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean. Our goal is to help scholars from different disciplines use archaeological evidence to advance our historical understanding of the slave-based societies that evolved in the Atlantic World during the colonial and ante-bellum periods.
The DAACS Summer Institute is designed for scholars wishing to contribute to DAACS and its
programmatic goals: generating high quality comparative data that is primed to help scholars develop innovative scholarship on enslavement across the early modern Atlantic World. Successful applicants should be focused on contributing data to DAACS, and on using the archive for their research and teaching. Meeting DAACS’ goals requires proficiency in the entwined skills of artifact identification and analysis, and data entry and analysis. Consequently, DSI focuses on teaching these skills through four weeks of in-depth material culture and DAACS database training with DAACS staff at Monticello. Priority is given to scholars committed to contributing to DAACS’s online archive (www.daacs.org).
Program Details: The DAACS Summer Institute 2025 is open to advanced graduate students (Ph.D. students) through senior scholars. Past DSI fellows have included:
• PhD candidates conducting comparative analyses who enter their field research into the
DAACS database and archive.
• Museum and cultural resources professionals seeking additional material culture training
who also wish to use the database at their home institutions.
• Senior scholars wanting to add recently excavated or legacy collections to the archive.
• Professors who wish to use DAACS not only for their own collections but as a teaching
tool in the classroom.
Successful applications will receive a $1500 stipend and approved round-trip travel costs. They will also be provided with group housing with other fellows. Because Monticello is in a rural setting with no public transportation, it is necessary for fellows to either rent a car, bring their own car, or arrange carpools with other fellows.
Fellowship Requirements:
• Fellows must attend two digital meetings in May prior to the start of the in-person program.
These meetings serve as an orientation to the DAACS database.
• Fellows must make a full-time commitment to the program, arriving Sunday, June 8 and staying through Thursday, July 3.
• Fellows will be in attendance from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. There may be cataloging sessions scheduled for shorter periods on Saturdays.
• Fellows are asked to bring field records and artifacts from the sites they are working on. Fellows
are required to give one short presentation on their research.
• Fellows are asked to compose at least one social media post about their research and share this
via their personal social media channels, tagging @TJMonticello, @DAACS and #digdaacs.
Fellowship Eligibility: Applicants should be pursuing their PhD, have a PhD or be committed to sustained and committed research using DAACS. Several fellowships are reserved for scholars from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the fields of archaeology and anthropology. Priority is given to scholars committed to contributing to DAACS’s online archive (www.daacs.org).
To Apply: Please submit a detailed letter of interest, describing your proposed research with
DAACS and your long-term research goals, cv, and two letters of recommendations sent directly to Jillian Galle (jgalle@monticello.org), Project Director of DAACS, by 5pm Monday, March 24, 2025. Please contact Jillian with any questions about your application or research proposal. The personal statement is the primary consideration for the advisory committee when selecting fellows.
Selection: The DAACS Fellowship Committee is comprised of DAACS Advisory Committee members who are archaeologists working across North America and the Caribbean. Applicants will be notified of their selection by April 1, 2025.
DAACS Summer Institute Fellowships are funded by the International Center for Jefferson Studies and The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
