The Partners

American overseas research centers are consortia of U.S. universities, colleges, museums, and research institutes. They maintain a permanent presence in the host countries where they operate and are the primary vehicle through which American scholars carry out research vital to our understanding of and interaction with other cultures. The nineteen members of CAORC promote international scholarly exchange, primarily through sponsorship of fellowship programs, foreign language study, and collaborative research projects. They facilitate access to research resources, provide a forum for contact and exchange, offer library and technical support and accommodation, and disseminate information to the scholarly and general public through conferences, seminars, exhibitions, publications, and, of course, DLIR on-line. Some have existed for over a century while others were founded in the decades following World War II in response to American scholarly needs and host country invitations.

American overseas research centers have home bases in the United States and operate research facilities, public museums, libraries, and offices in Europe, the Near and Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, West Africa, and the New World. An explicit element of their mission is a long-term commitment to the maintenance, improvement and expansion of each institution's overseas libraries and collections of research data in all formats and media to support the study of these regions of the world by American and host country scholars.

280 American universities, colleges, museums, and research institutes and societies hold 513 institutional memberships in the overseas research centers participating in this project. Representatives of these institutional members play a direct role in the governance and programs of the centers. Together CAORC's member centers grant annually more than 300 fellowships for overseas research to students and faculty at these and other American institutions. In addition, an average of 500 researchers with funding from the Fulbright programs, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as university sabbatical grantees and independent scholars affiliate each year with the centers in-country for facilities and research support services. So do a number of host-country and foreign researchers.

The Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) was founded in 1981 to advance higher learning and scholarly research by providing a forum for communication and cooperation among American overseas research centers; to provide general and continuing publicity about the importance and contributions of the centers; to exchange operational and administrative information among the centers, and to encourage joint research projects.

Last updated: December 7, 2004

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