Deadline: June 20, 2024
Applications are open for the Tech Policy Fellowship 2024-2025. The Tech Global Institute believes everyone has a stake in the technologies that impact their lives, and that people—not only the developers and traditional governors—should have a voice in how it is being designed and deployed.
They are looking for a cohort of six fellows for 2024-25 who believe in the same, and are committed to promoting equity, accountability and transparency to ensure underserved communities from the Global Majority have decision-making powers over technology design and governance. Specifically, they are interested in technologists, community organizers, activists and policy or legal professionals who are deeply embedded in their communities, are aligned with our mission, and are committed to contributing towards building a safer, more open, more equitable, and inclusive Internet ecosystem.
Fellowship Details
Policy Fellows at Tech Global Institute work with their staff, affiliate networks, senior fellows and community partners on a 6-month paid structured policy research project focused on one or more of their thematic areas. Each fellow is assigned to a mentor with whom they work together to shape their project, and produce a range of outputs, including (but not limited to) white papers, peer-reviewed publications, op-eds, community events or workshops, and other public interest scholarship or engagements.
Fellows collaborate closely with community organizations to study, articulate, and propose meaningful local or region-centric frameworks to address existing platform or technology related policy problems that have disproportionate negative impact on historically excluded communities in the Global Majority. Through this partnership, fellows play a critical role in building local capacity while ensuring their interventions are embedded in lived experiences of communities. They support fellows with professional development and public speaking opportunities.
Fellows can apply from anywhere in the world as this is a fully remote program. They have a flat payment applicable to all fellows irrespective of their geographic location. While they do not have expectations on time spent, fellows typically spend 16-20 hours per week on their project. They have a flexible working environment.
Eligibility
Applicants and their proposed projects should demonstrate the following:
- Impact: Applicants should clearly articulate their tightly structured policy question, along with timelines, expected outputs, and an explanation on why this is significant and demands change at a systemic level.
- Experience: Applicants should be able to demonstrate at least one of the following:
- be deeply familiar with their local political and policy contexts, rooted to communities, and have an understanding of public interest technology.
- be able to demonstrate their past contributions in a related field, and have a strong reach of experts and practitioners in their communities.
- be able to demonstrate their research and/or advocacy experience and how this will help them during their fellowship.
- Background: They welcome applications from a range of backgrounds, including (but not limited to) human rights, trust & safety, international law, public policy, community organizing and activism, social science research, and human-centered design/computing.
- Analytical Rigor: Candidates should be able to craft a roadmap for answering their policy question and build and implement research approaches to incorporate unimpeachable quantitative data, pertinent qualitative information and strong recommendations that can be presented to platforms/regulators/governments to illustrate the need for and path to change.
- Collaboration: Applicants should have experience working in an interdisciplinary environment of individuals from diverse backgrounds and identities. They should be comfortable engaging with a geographically distributed team, have the ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in formal writing, and be willing to contribute to strengthening the culture and shared knowledge of their cohort and the organization.
- Leadership: Applicants should be able to work independently and in groups in a self-directed manner to achieve goals and outcomes. They should possess a facilitative leadership approach that recognizes diverse leadership and working styles, and actively seeks opportunities to elevate others. They should experience working virtually with a high level of autonomy and be proactive in ensuring their work is tied to measurable impact.
- Mission and values alignment: Applicants should be deeply committed to advancing the rights, opportunities and voices of Global Majority communities and have an understanding of the sociopolitical histories that affect policy processes and decisions. Further, applicants should be aligned with the DEI policies, Code of Conduct, and ensure that they are respectful, thoughtful, inclusive and compassionate to diverse co-workers and partners.
Application
Interested applicants should submit the following in their application package at [email protected]. They do not accept applications through any other channel. They will only consider completed applications.
- Resume, indicating relevant professional experience and education
- Research proposal, no longer than 1,000 words.
- The research proposal should clearly outline the key questions, thematic focus, methodology, timeline, and expected outputs.
- The proposal should be fit for a policy project, not an academic research.
- Two references, including contact information
- References can be academic or professional.
- One writing sample.
- This can be an original op-ed, research or white paper, conference proceeding, blog post, policy brief, or any work-in-progress written by the applicant.
- Note that they take plagiarism seriously and do not accept writing samples produced using ChatGPT or other AI writing tools.
The application deadline is June 20, 2024. They will not accept submissions after the deadline has passed.
For more information, visit Tech Policy Fellowship.
