The Fund supports residencies at Yale of one semester to one year for foreign scholars in the humanities and social sciences who come from countries and cultures where there is a mutual need to improve relations and foster understanding with the United States. Eligible scholars are from the countries of Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, China, Eastern Europe that are not members of the European Union (EU), Turkey, the Caucasus, Russia, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, South and Southeast Asia, and Turkey.
Nominated by a Yale faculty mentor from one of the MacMillan Center’s area studies councils, each Rice Lecturer teaches one undergraduate course per semester on a subject related to their own region that supplements the council’s regular course offerings. An equally important role of the Rice Lecturer is to fully engage in the life of the council through formal and informal intellectual exchange with students and faculty.
The next entry period for faculty-submitted nominations will be from October-December 2025.
Spring 2026 Rice Fellow
Ornit Shani teaches Modern Indian History at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Haifa, where she heads the India Programme. She is the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (Cambridge University Press, 2018; and Penguin Random House India, 2018). The book won the 2019 Kamaladevi Chattophadyay New India Foundation Prize for the best book on modern India. It has been reviewed in academic journals, newspapers and magazines, and featured on a number of podcasts. READ MORE