2026 Higher Learning Program Open Call for Concepts

“My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul.”
- Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (1920)

The emergence of generative AI has triggered a firestorm of techno-utopian promises and apocalyptic predictions alike. These reckonings often imply that AI is “intelligent” in the human sense, even though from the iconic use of this term in his 1950 “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” Alan Turing called this attitude “dangerous” and famously defined artificial intelligence only in terms of how well computers could imitate human thought. Are we now facing an existential abdication of human capacities to machines? Or the usual evolution of how we define intelligence in keeping with our shifting technologies? Meanwhile, the terms of human and more-than-human intelligences are also unstable, with greater or lesser value assigned to particular populations, species, and objects according to our historical, social, and ecological contexts. How might different forms of AI – generative, predictive, agentic, and others, including models that are currently still theoretical – complicate or exacerbate the inequalities that arise from these norms? With so much at stake, the humanities have an urgent role to play in shaping contemporary understanding of artificial and other intelligences – and in making practical, informed recommendations about how to regulate and/or adopt AI in our learning, work, and most intimate lives.

“Why be happy when you could be normal?”
- Jeanette Winterson (2011)

The concept of normalcy is paradoxical. It entails the statistically average that is at the same time a moral imperative, a completely ordinary state that is nonetheless much to be desired, a cultural ideal. Moreover, the normal often functions as the ideal even when it is not numerically average. Despite the seemingly universal character of these formulations, the normal entered Western consciousnesses only in the modern era with the nineteenth-century efflorescence of statistics, bringing with it its opposite: the deviant, exceptional, aberrant, not normal. How does the concept of normalcy govern notions of human life, and when doesn’t it? What are the structures and systems that keep it in place, in realms as disparate as the aesthetic, socioeconomic, psychological, physiological, political, spiritual, and ethical? What, if anything, does the historical knowledge of its recent invention – and vigorous social rejections – enable?

This funding opportunity is overseen by Mellon’s Higher Learning program. Applications must be demonstrably grounded in the humanities and led by humanities scholars. Experimental methodologies, interdisciplinary and community collaboration, and pathways to informing campus and/or wider policies and practices are welcome. 

Higher Learning’s Open Call for Concepts supports inquiry into issues of vital social, cultural, and historical import. Projects should engage teams of scholars and/or students, and have visible, enduring impact at the institution. The Mellon Higher Learning team will review all submissions and invite a small number of the most promising concepts to be developed into full proposals for potential grant funding.   

Over the course of two previous calls for concepts launched between 2022 and 2024, Mellon awarded nearly $28.6 million to 56 accredited, non-profit, four-year-degree-granting institutions in the United States that offer a liberal arts education. With our 2026 Open Call for Concepts, Mellon commits to providing another $10 million through this funding opportunity. 

Registration for the Higher Learning program’s 2026 Open Call for Concepts is now open.

This call is open to all accredited, non-profit, four-year-degree-granting higher education institutions in the United States and its territories that offer a liberal arts education. As always, Mellon’s Higher Learning program seeks to support institutions with a demonstrated record of excellence in the humanities and particularly welcomes concepts from institutions that have not received Mellon funding in the last five years.   

All interested applicants must first register here by December 1, 2025. After Mellon staff have processed the registration request, eligible applicants will gain access to the application form in Mellon’s Fluxx Grants Portal. Applicants will be asked to provide a concept note, alongside a proposed grant amount and a brief budget description for their project. Applicants must also provide the following documents in support of the project:

Applications will be due by 3:00 p.m. ET on February 17, 2026. Awards will range from $250,000 to $500,000 for a duration of up to four years. 

Institutions are limited to submitting no more than three concepts by the application deadline. Finalists will be selected and invitations for full proposals will be issued during the summer of 2026, with final grant recommendations presented for prospective approval no later than November 2026, for a December 1, 2026 start date—and potentially sooner. 

To participate in this call for concepts, an organization must:    

The following institutions are not eligible to apply for funding, although they may be referenced as collaborators in applications:   

The Principal Investigator (PI), or applicant, must be a faculty member and/or dean in a program or department in the humanities or humanistic social sciences at the applicant institution. The PI may also be the institution’s provost/chief academic officer.      

To confirm eligibility for this funding opportunity and gain access to the application form, all interested applicants must directly submit a completed registration form by December 1, 2025. There is no limit to how many individuals per institution can register. 

Once eligible applicants are confirmed, the institution should coordinate with the relevant office that manages grant applications, such as the Office of Sponsored Projects or Foundation Relations, and run an internal competition among eligible applicants. Through this internal competition, institutions should select up to three applications to then submit to Mellon by February 17, 2026. Each institution may submit no more than three applications to Mellon for consideration. 

Visit our applicant resources for further details on how to apply. If you have any questions about this funding opportunity, please contact program staff at HLcall@mellon.org. Please note that, owing to the anticipated volume of applications, we are unable to provide feedback on preliminary concepts.