Samuel and Marion Merrill Graduate Student Travel Grants

Throughout his forty-year career as a professor of history at the University of Maryland, Horace Samuel Merrill earned the high regard of colleagues and students as a committed teacher, productive scholar, and caring mentor. An outstanding American political historian of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era periods, with interests extending through the New Deal, Professor Merrill took particular delight in assisting the younger scholars he met while conducting manuscript research at the Library of Congress. With the assistance of Marion Galbraith Merrill, his wife and scholarly collaborator, Professor Merrill fostered and provided hospitality to several generations of younger historians, even beyond those who formally studied under his guidance. Many went on to their own productive and fulfilling careers with a deep appreciation of the Merrills for the intellectual and social sustenance that made a difference in the early years of their professional lives.

The Samuel and Marion Merrill Graduate Student Travel Grants, supported by a bequest from the Merrill trust, are given annually to help sponsor the travel-related costs of graduate students who are confirmed as participants on the OAH Conference on American History program and who incur expenses traveling to the conference.

Five awards of $500 each may be awarded each year. Graduate students who are PhD candidates and who are presenting a paper or serving as a commentator on a session or panel are eligible to apply. Priority will be given to dissertation-stage doctoral candidates with decreasing priority given to students based on the year of matriculation in their respective PhD programs.

Please e-mail your paper title or panel title, with an abstract and a CV (indicating your anticipated year of completion of the PhD), and a paragraph describing why it is important for you to attend the conference (besides presenting your paper or serving as a commentator if you are doing so), as a PDF by midnight PST on November 1, 2022 to the Samuel and Marion Merrill Graduate Student Travel Grants Committee at merrilltravelgrant@oah.org.

Recipients will be notified after February 1, 2023. Grants will be announced at the 2023 OAH Conference on American History in Los Angeles, CA, March 30–April 2.

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