Woodrow Wilson Center International Fellowship Program 2020

Deadline: 01-Oct-20

The Wilson Center is inviting scholars, practitioners, journalists and public intellectuals to take part in its flagship international Fellowship Program and to take advantage of the opportunity to engage actively in the Center’s national mission.

In addition to its residential program, the Center conducts research through its programs, organizes conferences and seminars, and disseminates the content of its work and fellows’ research through its website and email marketing. The Center invites Fellows to take part in the Center’s conferences, meetings and seminars and to benefit from the wide range of dialogue that takes place at the Center.

Fellows conduct research and write in their areas of interest, while interacting with policymakers in Washington and Wilson Center staff and other scholars in residence.  The Center accepts policy-relevant, non-advocacy fellowship proposals that address key challenges confronting the United States and the world.

Award Information

• The Center offers a stipend of $90,000 for a nine-month fellowship. Fellows are responsible for their own health insurance and travel expenses.

Conditions of Award

• Fellows must devote full time to the fellowship study and may not accept a teaching assignment, another residential fellowship, or undertake any other major activities that require an extended absence from the Center during the tenure of their fellowship.
• Fellows are required to give a Work-in-Progress presentation, internal meeting where fellows can speak about their work, share ideas, and receive feedback from their peers, and to attend the Work-in-Progress presentations given by their colleagues. In addition, Fellows are encouraged to offer a presentation of their work publicly, where possible, and/or participate in other Center programming.
• The Center expects all Fellows to seek ways to share their expertise with the Washington policy community. The form of such interaction could range from a deep background briefing for an executive branch agency to an informal roundtable discussion with members of Congress and their staffs.

Selection Criteria

The basic criteria for selection are:

• Significance of the proposed research, including the importance and originality of the project;
• The relevance of the project to contemporary policy issues; try to convince the reader that there is some urgency or importance in your work that can resolve a larger problem.
• The relevance of the project to the programmatic work of the Center;
• Quality of the proposal in definition, organization, clarity, and scope; describe what the reviewers will learn from your project, why it is important, and how the reviewer will know your conclusions are valid. A clear hypothesis or step-by-step argument of a central problem helps capture the essence of your work for the reviewer. Also describe your methodology, i.e. how and why your approach is the best way to deal with such a problem. Since each field has different methodologies that the reviewer may not know, tell the reader what archives, sources, and techniques you plan to employ.
• Capabilities and achievements of the applicant and the likelihood that the applicant will accomplish the proposed project; not only should your proposal demonstrate how you have the technical know-how and ability to reach some conclusion, but that the conclusion is not preconceived. The proposal should convince the reviewer that there is something genuinely at stake with your inquiry and that your project will yield interesting results.
• Potential of a candidate to actively contribute to the life, priorities, and mission of the Center by making expert research accessible to a broader audience; remember that one of the Center’s main goals is to help inform policymakers to make well-informed decisions.

Eligibility Criteria

• Citizens or permanent residents from any country (applicants from countries outside the United States must hold a valid passport and be able to obtain a J-1 visa even if they are currently in the United States).
• Citizens or permanent residents from any country (applicants from countries outside the United States must hold a valid passport and be able to obtain a J-1 visa even if they are currently in the United States).
• Academic candidates must be at the post-doctoral level and have published a book or monograph beyond the Ph.D. dissertation.
• Practitioners or policymakers with an equivalent level of professional achievement
• English proficiency as the Center is designed to encourage the exchange of ideas among its fellows

Ineligibility Criteria

• Applicants working on a degree (even if the degree is to be awarded prior to the proposed fellowship year)
• Proposals of a partisan or advocacy nature
• Primary research in the natural sciences
• Projects that create musical composition or dance
• Projects in the visual arts
• Projects that are the rewriting of doctoral dissertations
• The editing of texts, papers, or documents
• The preparation of textbooks, anthologies, translations, and memoirs

Application Requirements

A complete application must include the following:

• The Fellowship Application Form;
• A current CV (not to exceed three pages); The Center will only accept the first three pages; please list your publications separately.
• A list of your publications that includes exact titles, names of publishers, dates of publication and status of forthcoming publications (not to exceed three pages);
• A Project Proposal (not to exceed five single-spaced typed pages, using 12-point type); The Center reserves the right to omit from review applications that are longer than the requested page length;
• A bibliography for the project that includes primary sources and relevant secondary sources (not to exceed three pages);
• Two letters of reference.

All application materials must be submitted in English.

For more information, visit https://www.wilsoncenter.org/fellowship-application