Jansen Fellowship

Jansen Fellowship

Established in 2016, the annual Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship is preferentially awarded to an emerging translator of color or a translator working from an underrepresented diaspora or stateless language.

The $1,000 fellowship will help cover the costs of attending the ALTA conference .

Submissions closed April 17, 2023. Submissions for the 2024 awards cycle will open mid-January 2024.

Applications must be submitted through our online form. Applicants for the Jansen Fellowship should apply using the ALTA Travel Fellowship application, and check the Jansen Fellowship eligibility box in the application form.

To apply for the Fellowship, submit:

  • a cover letter explaining your interest in attending the conference
  • current CV / resumé (list all translation credits, including forthcoming works under contract)
  • up to 10 pages of translated work (poetry or prose, double spaced)
  • the corresponding original language text

You may learn more about previous years’ Travel Fellows here.


Peter K. Jansen (1934-2007) was an eminent scholar and translator of 19th- and 20th-century German literature, and a University of Chicago Professor Emeritus. His remarkable contribution to German literary studies in English both as a scholar and a translator includes three plays by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Though Jansen retired from the University in 1999, he continued his work as an active translator of German and Austrian literature, and become involved in shaping some of the activities of the Goethe Institute of Chicago.