The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) offers nine to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in PhD programs in the United States (regardless of citizenship) and conducting dissertation research on non-US topics. The IDRF competition promotes a range of approaches and research designs beyond single-site or single-country research, including comparative work at the national and regional levels and explicit comparison of cases across time frames. The program is open to proposals informed by a range of methodologies in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, including research in archives and manuscript collections, fieldwork and surveys, and quantitative data collection. Fellowship amounts vary depending on the research plan, with a per-fellowship average of $21,000.

Eligible humanities disciplines include: Art History, Architectural History, Classics, Drama/Theater, Film Studies, Literature, Musicology, Performance Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, and Religion. 

Eligible social science disciplines include: Anthropology, Geography, History, Political Science, and Sociology, among others.