The NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine provides individual awards of up to $10,000 to U.S. citizens and permanent residents to support research in the collection of the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
The NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine was established in 2016 through support from The DeBakey Medical Foundation.
Spanning eleven centuries, the NLM collection encompasses a variety of digital and physical formats and originates from nearly every part of the globe. The collection includes the Michael E. DeBakey papers—representing the diverse areas in which Dr. DeBakey made a lasting impact, such as surgery, medical education, and health care policy—along with the papers of many other luminaries in science and medicine.
Supported research may be conducted onsite at the NLM by studying the collection in the NLM Reading Room, or remotely using NLM digital resources, including not only its digitized and born-digital collections but also its datasets. Projects embracing methods and tools of the digital humanities are welcome. Applicants are expected to complete their work according to their proposal and within their fellowship year.
Support for research in collections that are intellectually related to those of the NLM will be considered, but the overall proposed research must be primarily rooted in the NLM collection.
For the 2026 cycle of the fellowship, we welcome applicants justifying support for their research using the NLM collection based on needs such as:
- dedicated time to complete research and/or writing, including organizing, reviewing, and preparing collected research materials for a scholarly/interpretative publication.
- securing research and/or technical assistance for data and/or database analyses.
- analyzing and interrogating NLM’s digitized collections, web archive collections and/or historical datasets.
- preparing an open-access scholarly/interpretative digital publication, including work associated with incorporating images, video, audio, and/or manipulatable element(s) intended to enhance access and understanding by readers.
- payment of reproduction and/or permission fees for images of unique or rare materials essential for the applicant’s research.
We encourage applicants seeking support for digital and data-driven research to consult with the appropriate colleagues in their institution, or the CORE repository of Humanities Commons, to meet the terms of the NIH Public Access Policy for NIH supported work.
