Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Fellowship (Global South)

Deadline: 31-May-24

Apply for the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Fellowship, an opportunity for young professionals to have more support as they begin to explore the futures and foresight field.

NGFP knows that being a futurist can be a lonely place, and a sort of practice that particularly young people do on the side of their daily jobs, and usually for free. The fellowship is a way to provide the next generation of futures and foresight enthusiasts with a platform to connect with like-minded people from around the world, receive mentorship and build foresight capability, participate in regional and sector-specific hubs, and access funding to develop their foresight projects. Fellows also have the opportunity to participate in highly relevant events in the futures and foresight field, and to be connected with today’s decision-makers at the highest levels.

They have identified seven Foresight Transformation Missions: Climate and Just Transitions, Nuclear Security, Democracy & Governance, Intergenerational Fairness, Emerging Technologies, Indigenous and other Futures Methods from Around the World and Peacebuilding.

What is foresight?

• Foresight is a systematic way of engaging with uncertainty by exploring alternative futures, including aspirational ones. As a discipline, it has the potential to shape the future. It is not about predicting the future, but understanding your current and future operating environment. Insights gained from foresight equip communities and organisations to recognise and respond to emerging threats and opportunities by developing enhanced competitiveness, resilience and agility.
• A foresight practitioner is anyone who takes a futures approach to their work to explore and understand the impacts of longer-term factors and drivers of change on the future, to understand better how different futures might evolve, and to generate insights for decisions made today.

What funding is available?

• At the beginning of the journey, each fellow receives a USD 1,000 prize to develop and accelerate their project. By the end of their one-year journey, all fellows have the chance to run for the Fellowship Main Prize, which consists of a more substantial grant (at least USD 10,000) and acknowledges those who made the most of their journey.

Who can apply?

• Anyone between 18 and 35 years old, as well as those who are older, but have less than five years of experience using foresight. They are particularly enthusiastic about applications from those living in the Global South, and those working on the world’s most complex issues, or Foresight Transformation Missions, as they refer to them.
• Every year, they make sure they have at least two fellows under 25 years old. In 2024, they will reserve one spot within they cohort to a fellow from the Balkans. This is they way to honour the memory of a great SOIF’s colleague, Sophie Middlemiss, who passed away in 2021 and was passionate about the region. For the first time in 2024, they’re reserving space in the fellowship for emerging practitioners from the Middle East & North Africa region, in partnership with Dubai Future Foundation.
• They ask for applicants to be between the ages of 18-35 OR have less than five years foresight experience, as they want to champion and promote youth voices and those who are newer to the foresight space.

For more information, visit School of International Futures.
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