Call for Applications: Harvard Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration 2023–2024 Doctoral Fellows Program

Application deadline: February 10, 2023

Duration: Fellowships will begin on March 1, 2023 and end on August 30, 2024.

Open to: Harvard doctoral students working on issues related to migrant inclusion and host community solidarity. Harvard doctoral candidates across all schools may apply.

The Research Cluster on Migration at the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs invites applications from Harvard doctoral students across all the schools for an eighteen-month fellowship.

What is the Migration Cluster?

The title of the three-year Migration Research Cluster is “Building Inclusion and Sustaining Solidarity.” The main focus of the cluster is the challenge of encouraging and sustaining over time the solidarity of local frontline communities toward distress migrants arriving within their midst. Research addressing aspects of this challenge—the factors that motivate local communities to show or withdraw solidarity, the central and local state policies that support or undermine that local solidarity, the collaborations that stimulate or discourage acts of inclusion across the spheres of public activity—spans a range of disciplinary approaches. We invite Harvard doctoral students working on this or related topics to apply.

What is the Migration Cluster Doctoral Fellowship?

The Fellowship, extending over eighteen months, involves willingness to participate in and contribute to a lively intellectual community. This includes bi-weekly participation in the Migration Cluster seminar and the opportunity to present and receive feedback on ongoing Fellows’ work. Fellows will also be expected to develop a ‘deliverable’ that will be part of the public goods the Cluster aims to build (e.g., a policy or practice brief, an academic article). Fellows will have the opportunity to support the planning of and also to attend larger convenings of the Cluster. Fellows will receive a $7,500 stipend (to be awarded the first year of the eighteen-month Fellowship). The program accepts six fellows per year. Fellowships will begin on March 1, 2023 and end on August 30, 2024.

What is the application process?

Interested applicants should submit this online application form.

The application includes:

• Cover letter explaining: 1) what you hope to gain through this Fellowship; and 2) what you will contribute to the cohort of Fellows and the Migration Cluster broadly
• Research statement (~1000 words)
• Curriculum vitae
• One faculty letter of recommendation, preferably from the primary academic advisor (The letter of recommendation should be sent by the referee directly to Dr. Vasileia Digidiki)

The application period closes on February 10th, 2023 and successful applicants will be notified by February 20th, 2023. Successful applicants are expected to start their fellowship on March 1st, 2023.

If you have questions about the research cluster and/or the fellowship program please reach out to Dr. Vasileia Digidiki: vdigidik@hsph.harvard.edu

About the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration: The Weatherhead Research Cluster on Migration aims to understand both the processes and mechanisms by which empathic solidarity toward distress migrants is built and sustained, as well as the triggers of attitudinal change among frontline hosts. The Cluster is chaired by Professors Jacqueline Bhabha and Sarah Dryden-Peterson. It is funded by the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.