Applications for the 2025 Summer Fellowship Program are now open!
NOTE: Othering & Belonging Institute programs are operating remotely. The 2025 Summer Fellowship will be held remotely for the safety of all staff and fellows. Fellows will work from their home locations for the entirety of the fellowship, and all fellowship meetings and activities will take place online.
Apply here via Submittable. (You must be logged into a Submittable account in order to apply).
The Fellowship
The Othering & Belonging Institute Summer Fellowship is a paid research experience for individuals seeking to develop their research skills by engaging with the Institute’s multidisciplinary research, analysis, policy, and strategic narrative work. The purpose of the fellowship is to build the capacity and network of the next generation of researchers and community leaders who are committed to social and racial justice by providing mentorship and hands-on experience with social science research. In addition to working directly with their staff supervisor on an individual research project (see “Summer Projects” below), fellows engage as a cohort in weekly meetings or workshops on Institute frameworks, research methodologies, and contemporary social justice issues throughout the summer.
- Applications open: December 15, 2024
- Applications close: January 12, 2025 at 8pm PT
- Fellowship period: May 14 to August 14, 2025
- Time Commitment: Part-time, 20 hours per week
- Location: The 2025 Summer Fellowship will be held remotely.
- Working Hours: Fellowship programs and meetings will be held during the Institute’s working hours from 9am-6pm Pacific Time.
- Compensation: Each fellow’s hourly compensation rate is based on years of education completed, the University’s fixed pay scale and equity standards. Rates range from $26-31/hr
- Funding or support for a dissertation, individual research project, or independently selected research topic
- A fellowship for advanced PhD students (post second year of PhD) or professionals with extensive full-time research experience
- An opportunity to work directly with Institute-affiliated faculty members
- A residential, full-time fellowship
Eligibility
The summer fellowship is open to traditional and non-traditional students. As of May 2025, students must be one of the following to be eligible:
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Currently enrolled in community college or an undergraduate program, or graduated within the last two years (only May 2023 graduates and later are eligible)
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Currently enrolled in a Master's program or graduated within the last two years (only May 2023 graduates and later are eligible)
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Doctoral students in their first or second year (as of May 2025)
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International students are also eligible, but are responsible for securing their own U.S. work permit/visa by mid-April 2025
Summer Projects
Summer fellows dedicate most of their paid work hours to their individual summer projects. Each fellow will be paired with a lead staff researcher to work on a predetermined summer-long project for a specific research area. Summer projects primarily involve independent, online research oriented toward public policy, systems change, and/or strategic narrative. Tasks will include:
- Background research for new or emerging projects, such as developing research databases, conducting interviews, or writing literature reviews, case studies, and brief research memoranda.
- Supporting ongoing research, such as data gathering, data analysis or assisting with writing sections of a book, reports, discussion papers, or other Institute publications.
- Translating academic work into newsworthy pitches using accessible language and knowledge of current affairs.
2025 Summer Projects:
1. Climate and Agrarian Just Transitions
This summer fellow will play a key role in developing the Global Justice Program's Asia-Pacific Just Transitions survey, partnerships, and analysis. Building on the Global Justice Program’s 2023 African Just Transitions Project, this summer fellow will conduct multi-lingual background research and stakeholder mapping in order to assess how climate, agri-food, and environmental organizations across the Asia-Pacific are combating the drivers of the climate crisis, managing the impacts of the climate crisis, and forging strategies to build climate resilience. Skills needed: excellent research and writing skills, familiarity with climate justice frameworks and cultural competence with communities most affected by climate crisis, ability to conduct research in language across Asia-Pacific region (pref. Mandarin, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Bengali, and/or Hindi).
2. Enlightenment Research
This fellow will research liberalism, enlightenment-based epistemologies and practices and how they have been critiqued or countered in various sciences and social sciences in the last century. This includes disciplines such as psychology, complex systems theory, quantum mechanics, ecology, and more. Skills needed: excellent writing and organizational skills, ability to synthesize information from multiple sources.
3. Gender and Authoritarianism Across Europe and North America
This summer fellow, through case studies, will help OBI's Democracy and Belonging Forum team build a repository of narratives and policies, proposed or enacted by authoritarian populist leaders and movements and their positioning on gender issues across Europe and North America. Skills needed: research analysis, literature review, legal and policy analysis, and additional language skills are a plus
4. Racial Disparities Dashboard Project
The Equity Metrics program is actively engaged in and has an extensive fair housing/social equity related body of work that includes but is not limited to racial residential segregation, disparate impact, zoning reform, and access to opportunity. This summer fellow would assist in research/qualitative/quantitative analysis that encompasses one or more of these fair housing issues. This year we plan to focus on expanding on our Racial Disparities Dashboard model. Skills needed: familiarity with racial justice and housing justice frameworks, excellent research skills, quantitative analysis skills
5. Radical Imagination as a Tool for Belonging
This project is part of the OBI Arts and Cultural Strategy’s program research on Radical Imagination. Given the new political climate and the state of global affairs, the Othering and Belonging Institute will engage in a two-year research project to develop a framework and toolkit on Radical Imagination as a strategy to build a world where everyone belongs. Skills needed: ability to conduct independent research, knowledge of arts & cultural strategy practices, ability to use editing software like Adobe and InDesign
6. Social Housing Policy Research
The project will focus on social housing policy research to inform emerging California state planning and legislation. The specific questions and scope will respond to the needs and visions of equitable housing advocates, and the relevant frameworks and research already underway at OBI. Skills needed: excellent research and writing skills, familiarity with housing policy issues
7. Audience Research and Engagement Strategies
This fellow will play a crucial role in shaping OBI communication's team content strategy by gaining a deeper understanding of our audiences, their needs and preferences. You will design and implement a reader survey of our email subscribers, analyze survey results to identify key trends and insights, and you will compile your findings into a comprehensive report that highlights who our audience is, what they want from OBI, and how they discovered the Institute. You will collaborate with our team to translate survey insights into actionable recommendations, helping us create content that resonates with our audience and strengthens our community. Skills needed: strong written and verbal skills, experience with online survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms, and experience with data analysis
Responsibilities & Expectations
All Summer Fellows are expected to:
- Demonstrate a genuine commitment to social and racial justice, equity, and civil liberties.
- Remotely, work 20 hours per week for three months (May 14 to August 14, 2025).
- Engage in collective learning as a cohort by completing required readings and participating in regularly scheduled workshops with Institute staff, cohort meetings, and team building activities.
- Present the findings or results of their summer project to the Institute at the end of the summer.
Minimum Qualifications
- Research proficiency
- Basic computer literacy
- Ability to prioritize tasks and meet deadlines
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Excellent interpersonal communication skills and political acumen
- Interested in, and experience supporting social justice and equity issues
- Self-starter with the ability to initiate and complete work with limited supervision
- Stellar organizational skills, and ability to work independently and collaboratively
Desirable Skills
- Qualitative research skills, including coding qualitative data, such as interview and focus group transcripts, developing research databases, and writing literature reviews
- Quantitative research skills, including but not limited to data collection; data entry; statistical analysis; and retrieval, compilation, manipulation, and synthesis of Census Bureau data
- Multimedia and editorial skills, such as writing and editing electronic newsletters, video recording and editing using Adobe Premiere, and audio editing using Adobe Audition
Apply here via Submittable (note: you must create a Submittable account to apply).
