Overview
The African Peacebuilding Network (APN) of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) invites research fellowship applications from African scholars, researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners working on conflict and peacebuilding issues at universities and research institutions; or regional, governmental, and nongovernmental agencies or organizations based in Africa.
About the Individual Research Fellowships Program
A core component of the APN, the Individual Research Fellowship (IRF) program is a vehicle for enhancing the quality and visibility of independent African peacebuilding research both regionally and globally, while making peacebuilding knowledge accessible to key policymakers, practitioners, and research centers of excellence in Africa and around the world. Fellowship recipients produce research-based knowledge that is relevant to, and has a significant impact on peacebuilding scholarship, policy, and practice on the continent. For its part, the APN works toward inserting the evidence-based knowledge that fellowship award recipients produce into regional and global debates, practices, and policies focusing on peacebuilding. The program also strives to build a highly visible and active network of African scholars and practitioners capable of projecting African perspectives and voices onto global peacebuilding discourses, knowledge, and practices.
Support is available for research and analysis on the following issues:
- Causes, drivers, actors, and trajectories of violent conflict;
- Natural resource conflict: community, national and regional dimensions
- Geopolitics and histories of conflict, conflict mediation and peace;
- Minorities, under-represented groups, and the social dynamics of conflict and peace;
- Climate Change, Energy Transitions, Conflict and Peace
- Climate change adaptation and mitigation practices and peace
- Religion and peace
- Resilience, conflict prevention and transformation;
- State and non-state armed actors, transnational crime, extremism, displacement, and migration;
- Post-conflict elections, democratization, governance, and development;
- Statebuilding, nation-building, identities, and the citizenship question;
- Transitional justice, reconciliation, and peace;
- The economic and financial dimensions of peace support operations and post-conflict reconstruction;
- Regional Economic Communities (RECs), regionalism and peace;
- UN-AU-REC Partnerships and Peacebuilding Architectures ;
- Media, digital technology, AI, war, and peacebuilding;
- Cultures, media, and art(s) of peace;
- Women, youth, and peacebuilding;
- Water politics, conflict, and peace;
- Theater, Music, and Peace
- Human mobilities, insecurities and peace
- Peace Education and African Literatures
- Prevention of mass atrocities; and
- Diseases, Politics and Peace
Fellowships are awarded on a competitive, peer-reviewed basis and are intended to support six months of field-based research, from June 2024 to December 2024. Up to seventeen (17) individual fellowships of a maximum of $15,000 each will be awarded. Women are strongly encouraged to apply.
During the fellowship period, recipients are required to participate in two mandatory workshops organized by the APN. These workshops will provide opportunities to refine recipients’ research designs, focus and methods; present findings; explore ways to make their work more accessible through publications and other means to multiple peacebuilding constituencies; networking, and developing constructive working relationships with other fellows, senior academic, and practitioner facilitators.
Research Fellowships Proposals
The APN is interested in innovative field-based projects that demonstrate strong potential for high-quality research and analysis, which in turn can inform policy and practical action on peacebuilding and/or facilitate inter-regional collaboration and networking among African researchers and practitioners.
Proposals should clearly describe research objectives and significance, with alignment between research questions and goals and research design/methods. Proposals should also demonstrate knowledge of the research subject and relevant literature, and address the feasibility of proposed research activities, including a timeline for project completion. Applicants should also discuss the likely relevance of the proposed research to current knowledge on peacebuilding practice and policy and situate it within existing literature. We strongly encourage the inclusion of a brief, but realistic, budget outline, keeping within the allotted amount for the fellowship and fitting appropriately within a six-month project and the page limit required.
Eligibility
All applicants must be African citizens currently residing in an African country. This competition is open to African academics, as well as policy analysts and practitioners.
Applicants who are academics must hold a faculty or research position at an African university or research organization, and have a PhD obtained no earlier than January 2014. Applicants who have not been awarded their PhDs by February 11, 2024 will not have their cases prioritized to be eligible as academics.
Applicants who are policy analysts or practitioners must be based in Africa at a regional or sub-regional institution; a government agency; or a nongovernmental, media, or civil society organization, and have at least a master’s degree obtained before January 2019, with at least five years of proven research and work experience in peacebuilding-related activities on the continent.
