Kroc Institute Visiting Research Fellowship 2025-2026

Description

Each year, the Kroc Institute’s Visiting Research Fellows Program brings outstanding scholars focused on peace research to the University of Notre Dame for a semester or full academic year. We provide fellowships to both academic and alumni scholars.  The deadline for submitting applications is Friday, January 31, 2025.

Academic Fellows

Fellowships are offered to scholars with substantial research experience who will connect their research to ongoing Kroc Institute research initiatives.  For the academic year 2025-26, we invite research proposals that focus on one or more of the following themes:

• Climate Change and Environmental Justice.  We are interested in innovative interdisciplinary approaches to understanding and addressing the pressing environmental challenges we face today and their impacts on peace, broadly conceived to include environmental justice, environmental peacebuilding and sustainable peace.                                                                                                                                                                                          
• Intersection of Gender, Race, Class and Peacebuilding. We are interested in interdisciplinary approaches and qualitative, participatory, and/or feminist methodologies. Thematically, we are interested in questions of intersectionality in relation to identity, power, representation and direct and structural violence.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
• International Mediation. We are interested in international mediation, preventive diplomacy and national dialogue as strategies for preventing and ending high intensity conflict.  Preference will be given to applicants whose research has direct relevance to policy and/or practice.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
• Media, Technology and Peacebuilding. We are interested in the impact of digital platforms on conflict dynamics and peace processes; the use of technology to support democratic inclusion in governance; and technology to support peacebuilding (peacetech).  Preference will be given to applicants whose research has direct relevance to policy and/or practice.                                                                                                                                                                                                           
• Peace Accords Matrix (PAM). We are interested in the design and implementation of peace accords, with special attention to inclusive peace processes that involve civil society, transitional justice and country contexts currently negotiating or implementing a peace accord.  Preference will be given to applicants whose research has direct relevance to policy and/or practice.                                                                                                                                                                                              
• Peacebuilding and the Arts.  We are interested in the various ways in which the arts - understood broadly to include performance, poetry, fiction, music, visual arts and more - are used to contribute to peacebuilding.  This category aims to attract scholar-artists.

In all the above categories, the applicant should present a clear and concise description of the planned research project, its significance, why the Kroc Institute is an ideal place for the researcher to complete a fellowship, and how the project will build on existing research in a given field.

Applicants must indicate whether they seek a fellowship for a single semester or the full academic year.

Alumni Fellows

We invite Kroc Institute alumni who graduated prior to 2017 and hold an advanced degree to apply for a one-semester (fall or spring) visiting research fellowship. This fellowship targets alumni who have pursued careers as peacebuilding practitioners and seek time to reflect on and write about their work while in residence at the Institute.

The successful alumni visiting fellow will be expected to be involved in the intellectual life of the Institute, and to produce a tangible result