Prior to its merger with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies maintained an active fellowship program. This legacy of support for scholarship in ethnic and immigrant studies has been continued at HSP with the Balch Institute Fellowships. Each year, two or three fellows are awarded a stipend to support one month of residency in Philadelphia to enable them to research on topics related to the ethnic and immigrant experience in the United States and/or American cultural, social, political, or economic history post-1875. Past Balch fellows have done research on immigrant children, Italian American fascism, German Americans in the Civil War, Pan-Americanism, African American women's political activism, and much more.

The stipend is $2,500. The Library Company's Cassatt House fellows' residence offers rooms at reasonable rates, along with a kitchen, common room, and offices with internet access, available to resident and nonresident fellows at all hours.

Current Fellows

• Sarah Bane, PhD Candidate in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, Join the Club: Regional Print Clubs in the United States during the Interwar Period

• Cory Wells, PhD Candidate in Transatlantic History, University of Texas in Arlington, Immigrant Nativists: Irish Protestants and Anti-Catholicism in the Atlantic World

Past Fellows

2017–2018

• Samuel King, PhD Candidate in History, University of South Carolina, Exclusive Dining: Immigration and Restaurants during the Era of Chinese Exclusion, 1882–1943

• Brianna Nofil, PhD Candidate in History, Columbia University, Gender, Community Policing, and Crime Control in Late Twentieth-Century America

2016–2017

• Muiris MacGiollabhuí, PhD Candidate in History, University of California, Santa Cruz, Carrying the Green Bough: An Atlantic History of the United Irishmen, 1795–1830

• Dr. Raluca-Nicoleta Rogoveanu, Department of Modern Languages and Communication Sciences, Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania, Becoming Romanian-American: A Study of the First Romanian Ethnic Organizations in Philadelphia

2015–2016

• Dr. Duane Corpis, Department of History, New York University, Shanghai, Overseas Charity and German Protestantism: Global Networks, Local Norms, 16th–19th Centuries

• Stephen O'Donnell, PhD Candidate in History, University of Strathclyde, The Transatlantic Slovak National Movement, 1890–1920

2014–2015

• Dr. Hidetaka Hirota, Columbia University: An Anti-Alien Tradition: The History of American Nativism

• Julia Lange, PhD Candidate in American Studies, University of Hamburg: Contested Histories: German-American Politics of Memory and the Holocaust

• Kristina Poznan, PhD Candidate in History, College of William and Mary: Becoming Immigrant Nation-Builders: The Development of Austria-Hungary’s National Projects in the United States, 1880–1920s

2013–2014

• Kristen Condotta, PhD Candidate in History, Tulane University: Professional "Negotiantes": Irish Immigrant Networks and Atlantic New Orleans, 1770–1820
   
• Elisabeth Piller, PhD Candidate in History, University of Heidelberg, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Trondheim: Re-Winning American Hearts and Minds: German Cultural Diplomacy and the United States, 1919 to 1932
   
• Rachel Wise, PhD Candidate in Literature, University of Texas at Austin: Losing Appalachia: Rethinking Genre through Local Color's Out-of-Place Objects

2012–2013

• Dr. Dominique Daniel, Kresge Library, Oakland University: Archiving Ethnic History: Ethnic Identities and the Shaping of the Balch Institute Collections

• Dr. Konstantinos Karpozilos, University of Peloponnese, Greece: "The Great American Family": "Americanization" and the Shaping of Modern Greece (1944–1959)

• Dr. Mark Santow, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth: Castles Made of Sand? Home Ownership in the Modern US

2011–2012

• Dr. Daniel Amsterdam, Department of History, The Ohio State University: Building a Civil Welfare State: Businessmen's Forgotten Campaign to Remake Industrial America
   
• Alecia Barbour, PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology, SUNY Stony Brook: Music and Remembrance: Listening to U.S. "Internment Camps," 1939–1947

2010–2011

• Corey Davis, PhD Candidate in History, University of Illinois at Chicago: The Mind of the Merchant Class: The National Board of Trade and the Making of a National Political Economy in the Late Nineteenth Century
   
• Anne Parsons, PhD Candidate in History, University of Illinois at Chicago: Our Brothers Keepers: Mental Asylums, Prisons, and the Institutionalization of Twentieth-Century America

2009–2010

• Dr. Simone Cinotto, University of Turin, Italy: Public Housing and Cultural Pluralism in Italian Harlem, 1937–1941
   
• Dr. Dolores Janiewski, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand: Philadelphia and the Construction of a Reactionary Culture, 1878–1918

2008–2009

• Gregory Kupsky, PhD Candidate, Ohio State University: German America and National Socialism, 1933–1945
   
• Alyssa Ribeiro, PhD Candidate, University of Pittsburgh: City of Brotherly Love? Intergroup Relations between Blacks and Latinos in Philadelphia, 1940s–1980s
   
• Joan Fragaszy Troyano, PhD Candidate, George Washington University: Presenting and Representing Ethnicity in the 1970s

2007–2008

• Dr. Kimberly Sims, Department of History, American University: Blacks, Italians, and the Politics of New York City Crime, 1900–1945
   
• Carisa A. Worden, PhD Candidate in American Studies, New York University: "One Vast Brothel": Sexuality and Servitude from Chattel Slavery to the "Black Side of White Slavery"
   
• Katherine L. Turner, PhD Candidate in History, University of Delaware: Cooking and Eating Among Working-Class Americans, 1880–1930

2006–2007

• Rae Bielakowski, PhD Candidate, Loyola University, Chicago: "The Mystical Body": Negotiating Ethnicity and Race
   
• Dr. Russell A. Kazal, University of Toronto at Scarborough: The Lost World of Pennsylvania Pluralism: Immigrants, Local Intellectuals, and the Regional Roots of Multiculturalism, 1880–1970
   
• Cristina Stanciu, PhD Candidate, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1880–1924

2005–2006

• Ikuko Asaka, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Transnational Formations of Race, Gender, and Identities among Black Canadian Emigrationists, 1830–1869
   
• Dr. Kathleen DeHaan, Department of Communication, Charleston College: Letters of Transit: Immigrants Write Their Diasporas
   
• Dr. Rodrigo Lazo, Department of English, University of California, Irvine: Latin American Writers in Philadelphia, 1810–1830