Fellowship Administration:
Innovating new relevant knowledge

Unrestricted fellowship funding giving researchers the freedom to pursue novel ideas can lead to new knowledge with the potential to address pressing societal challenges. 

Recent research indicates that unrestricted fellowships funding “people, not projects” are more likely to accelerate scientific innovation, relative to restricted research grants. For example, recipients of fellowships awarded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which “tolerates early failure, rewards long-term success, and gives its appointees great freedom to experiment,” are 96 percent more likely to produce breakthrough research, relative to grantees of the National Institutes of Health, who are “subject to short review cycles, predefined deliverables, and renewal policies unforgiving of failure” (Azoulay et al 2011). Observers have called for increased use of unrestricted fellowships to increase “research autonomy and risk taking” in science (Cowen and Collison 2019, Park et al 2023).

The Social Science Research Council has an extensive history of working with funding partners to design and administer fellowship programs that foster the production of new and relevant knowledge. We craft fellowship goals and selection criteria, design publicity and marketing materials, recruit applications from large domestic and international talent pools, secure leading experts to serve on peer review panels, engage fellow cohorts in mentoring, learning, and community-building activities, and provide efficient and responsive application processing, peer review management, award administration, and outcome reporting.

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Arnold Ventures Criminal Justice Innovation Fellowships

The Arnold Ventures Criminal Justice Innovation Fellowships support post-doctoral fellows who are pursuing policy-relevant causal research designed to innovate and evaluate cost-effective and scalable policy solutions that advance the efficacy and equity of criminal justice practices. Fellows receive salaries of $120,000 with benefits and annual salary increases for up to three years.
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All Fellowship Programs:

African Peacebuilding Network Fellowships

The African Peacebuilding Network (APN) individual and working group fellowships support the local innovation of new knowledge with the potential to illuminate and support peacebuilding initiatives on and around the African continent.
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Arts Research in Communities Fellowships

The Arts Research in Communities fellowships support embedded ethnographic research in partnership with community arts organizations, enabling new insights about how to support thriving arts ecosystems.
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The Inter-American Foundation Research Fellowships

The Inter-American Foundation Research Fellowships support rigorous, field-based, and actionable research on the economic and social impacts of community-led development programs in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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Just Tech Fellowships

The Just Tech fellowships support diverse cohorts of researchers and practitioners as they imagine and build technological futures that advance human well-being.
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Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowships

The Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa fellowships support doctoral students in Africa as they explore, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions to local challenges.
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