Grants and Writing Resources for Brown University
Brown tied Harvard for second in the nation in 2025-26 Fulbright winners. Recent alumni and current graduate students were offered 41 grants and accepted 37, and began teaching and research in 24 countries in fall 2025. It was Brown's tenth consecutive year among the top three student Fulbright producers.
Travel and Research Grants
Doctoral students in years one through six and MFA students can get Conference Travel Grants of up to $700 per academic year to present at a conference, in person or virtually. The money can go to one trip or be split across several. Attending without presenting doesn't qualify.
For summer work away from Brown, the Graduate School's Joukowsky Summer Research Award pays $500 to $1,500 for research or academic travel between May and August, such as a language program or summer workshop. Its travel and grant list also includes Doctoral Research Travel Grants and a Research Mobility Fellowship that supports a semester of pre-dissertation or dissertation research. BioMed students use their division's own travel awards.
Summer Research for Undergraduates
Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards, which date to the 1980s, fund undergraduates to work with Brown faculty on research or on building a course, in the summer or during a semester. An International UTRA runs only in summer. Student and faculty member have to be abroad on site together. Summer researchers report their findings at the Summer Research Symposium in Sayles Hall, a two-day August event split by field.
Literary and Essay Prizes
The English department's undergraduate prizes include the Preston Gurney Prizes for seniors' critical essays of 5,000 words or less and the Casey Shearer Memorial Award for creative nonfiction by juniors and seniors; each pays $1,000 for first place and $500 for second. Smaller Rome Prizes go to lyric essays, poems and essays on literary theory.
Literary Arts gave 14 prizes in 2026, several open to both undergraduates and graduate students, among them the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Feldman Prizes in Fiction. MFA fiction writers have two prizes of their own, the Robert Coover Prize for Innovative Fiction and the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction.
Writing Groups and Retreats
Associates at the Sheridan Center's Writing Center, all graduate students, give free consultations to anyone at Brown at any stage of a draft. Its Graduate Writing Communities add a weekly writing group on the fifth floor of the Sciences Library. Twice a year, in January and July, doctoral students can spend a week at the Dissertation Writing Retreat, run with the Graduate School. The Graduate Writing Collective meets 12 times across the fall and spring to help students revise a journal article for peer review.
Where Dissertations Are Published
PhD candidates file through the library's electronic theses and dissertations system, and approved dissertations are archived in the Brown Digital Repository. Full text is open by default under the Graduate School's dissertation guidelines. A student can limit downloads to the Brown community for two years at a time, up to ten years.
If you'd like an editor's eye on a thesis chapter or a research paper before it goes out, we can help. See our Brown University dissertation and thesis editing and Brown University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with Brown University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your Brown writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.