Deadline: 30 September 2019
Applicants are invited to apply for Digital Civil Society Lab’s Non-Resident Fellowship to support social sector leaders to dedicate some of their time working on ideas that apply to broad swaths of civil society.
The goal is to provide enough time, space, expertise, and financial support to help turn ideas into prototypes or action, and to build a cohort of fellows to support ongoing learning and community.
Previous fellows have built online tools for understanding privacy regulations, drafted new data governance mechanisms, and incubated a digital security exchange.
Fellowship projects should be designed to:
- address a challenge of safe, ethical, and effective digital data governance or practice that is common to nonprofits and civic associations globally
- produce a prototype, draft or complete product in one year
- benefit from access to scholarship and researchers
- have a plausible plan for post-fellowship implementation and support
- be shareable and open for discussion, adaptation, promotion and reuse during and after the fellowship period
Tracks
- Digital Civil Society
- Race and Technology
Focus Areas
- Software and hardware designed for the values and interests of civil society actors.
- Organizational practices that align with civil society missions and protect institutional independence from markets or governments.
- Legal practices and regulatory frames that protect the fundamental building blocks of civil society, including free association, speech, and privacy.
- Social norms and practices that promote safe and ethical data collection, generation, and use.
Benefits
Fellows will receive:
- A $20,000 stipend, paid at the beginning of the fellowship, to support work on a year-long project.
- A weeklong in-person convening of the cohort on the Stanford campus, January 20-24, 2020.
- Travel support to cover the cost of attending the January 2020 weeklong convening.
- Project support up to $5,000 to support additional project-related travel and expenses as appropriate.
- Mentorship from fellowship directors and access to fellowship alumni from previous cohorts.
Guidelines
- Each fellow will pursue a project or set of activities of their own design over the course of the fellowship. Applicants pursuing projects that are already in progress, as well as projects that may not be fully completed within one year, are eligible to apply.
- Fellows are expected to engage as a cohort with the other Non-Resident Fellows as well as with Stanford postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and student researchers.
- While they welcome applications from outside the United States, they are currently unable to support the acquisition of visas. If applicants are applying from outside the United States and are accepted, applicants will need to secure their own visa.
Eligibility Criteria
The Non-Resident Fellowship is open to applicants 18 years of age or older who meet the following conditions:
- Meet all submission deadlines and submit the application in English;
- Commit to spend twelve months undertaking a project addressing one of two topical tracks: Digital Civil Society, or Race and Technology;
- Commit to contribute a final written report, video or audio interview;
- Commit to attend a week-long convening of the fellowship cohort at Stanford University, January 20-24, 2020. This week involves an introduction to the Lab and its research goals and activities, opportunities to meet other communities on campus, independent time to interact with scholars and research institutes on campus and in the area, and the development of individual year-long work plans. Fellows are encouraged to engage with and imagine/identify additional collective activities for their cohort.
- Applicant’s initiative cannot involve a political campaign or legislative lobbying efforts.
How to Apply
Applications must be submitted online via given website.
For more information, please visit https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/dcsl-non-resident-fellowships/
