Rocca Pre-dissertation Research

Application Instructions and Forms (link)

ONLY UC BERKELEY DOCTORAL STUDENTS ARE ELIGIBLE

In memory of her parents Andrew and Mary Thompson Rocca, Helen Rocca Goss established by her will an endowment to support doctoral students at the University of California, Berkeley. The endowment supports student scholars at the advanced graduate doctoral level who are concentrating in African Studies.

The faculty governing committee has decided to make a small portion of the funds available for a few pre-dissertation research awards of up to $4000 each for summer research trips. The awards are to support preliminary research trips of 8 - 12 weeks to the prospective field site(s) for doctoral graduate students who intend to return to the Berkeley campus and prepare dissertation research proposals on topics relevant to African Studies for submission to other funding sources in the academic year that immediately follows the preliminary research trip. The Rocca Pre-Dissertation Fellowship is not to be used as a supplement for dissertation research and students can only received this award once during the course of their studies. Generally, students at the end of their first year of graduate study are not competitive for this award.

Recipients are expected to comply with CPHS guidelines. Recipients are also required to provide within two months of their return, a brief report on their summer activities and progress with their dissertation prospectus.

For information that will be useful upon their return, applicants are directed to the IIS online dissertation proposal writing workshop for assistance in all stages of dissertation research proposal preparation: http://iis.berkeley.edu/content/dissertation-proposal-resources. Also useful is The Art of Writing Proposals (Pzreworski & Saloman).