Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society welcomes applications for its 2025-2026 fellowships. Fellows will work in Cambridge, MA to conduct independent work as part of one of the Center’s topical workstreams (see details below), in collaboration with BKC faculty, staff, students, and the broader BKC community.
Through this call, the Center will accept candidates across three tracks:
- Academic fellowships for full-time faculty members
- Post-doc fellowships for scholars who have recently completed their PhDs or equivalent
- Non-academic fellowships for accomplished practitioners from outside the academy
More information about the 2025-2026 BKC Fellowship program is detailed below.
Applications will be accepted until Wednesday, April 30, 2025, at 11:59pm Eastern Time. Please see additional application instruction information.
APPLY HERE
Please note: Harvard University recently provided a statement on financial stewardship that applies to the Berkman Klein Center’s fellowship roles. Current uncertainties in funding and appointments may affect the size of the cohort, or the ability to host one at all, for the 2025-26 academic year. The call described below solicits concrete candidate interest, and we’ll provide an update on next year’s program as soon as we have more certainty.
About the BKC Fellowships Program • 2025-2026 Fellowship Workstreams • Our Collaborative Approach • Who Should Apply? • Support • Community Principles, Policies, and Resources • Notice of Nondiscrimination • Application
About the BKC Fellowships Program
Over the course of its 25+ year history, BKC has taken a unique approach to developing and delivering innovation in modes beyond the confines of a traditional university. This is due in large part to the unusual model the center has adopted and honed for fellowships. While traditional university programs emphasize and rely on academic credentials as a gate to fellowships, the BKC Fellowship program instead considers the whole person – their path, values, and contributions – in the spirit of the Internet itself.
This has led to an active alumni network of 500+ BKC fellows, with participants going on to advance their careers in academia or work in government, tech, social impact, and the arts. Early projects like Creative Commons and the Digital Public Libraries of America – as well as newly incubated initiatives such as the Integrity Institute and Data Nutrition Project – have demonstrated the crucible of bringing together new and non-esoteric ideas to make progress in the digital space.
2025-2026 Fellowship Workstreams
For the new academic year, the Center is taking a new approach to its work and its fellowships. We are focusing our efforts on a number of discrete workstreams: bodies of work led by a faculty member that are tied to the critical issues and topics of the day. Workstreams take up problems within those areas that are of clear importance and even urgency, and that lack easy answers. These problems will be at a high enough level of generally not to be picayune, and a high enough level of specificity not to devolve into platitudes or balancing tests. (“We just need to balance security and privacy.”) Making progress on such problems will require expertise from multiple disciplines and approaches, and implementation of mitigations and solutions will typically need different people and organizations with hands on different levers to pull them more or less at once.
Candidates will apply for consideration to be embedded with one of five workstreams at the Center. Those who are selected for a fellowship will collaborate with a team of Harvard faculty, staff, students, and others on projects, tools, events, and publications related to their workstream topic:
- AI Interpretability Ethics and Implications
- AI Ethics with Allen Lab <> BKC
- Agentic AI Protocols and Risk Mitigations
- Artificial General Intelligence Futurecasting and Policy Development
- Tech, Tools, and Practices for Improving University Discourse
- Safety Solutions for Social Media
While your fellowship application should showcase the types of projects you're interested in pursuing within your chosen workstream, the final project slate will be determined collectively by your workstream cohort during a fall planning process. All projects will be executed through collaboration among the fellows, faculty, and staff.
Our Collaborative Approach
We endeavor to assemble a cohort of mission-aligned fellows who will develop plans, events, and projects collaboratively for each workstream. As part of their application materials, prospective fellows should describe their interest in and ability to contribute to a specific workstream; they also may propose a project to be executed in collaboration with BKC faculty, staff, students, and other fellows. Although individual outputs (articles, studies, manuscripts) may be included in the proposal, they ought not to be the centerpiece.
We are most interested in supporting fellows with an interest in convening experts and stakeholders on key issues in novel ways and combinations, and producing a multitude of publicly accessible artifacts (policy recommendations, product prototypes, white papers, etc.) in collaboration with Center faculty and fellows.
Representative examples from past cohorts include:
- A multi-day conference bringing together trust and safety workers to discuss the field’s past, present, and future.
- A closed-door workshop for regulators, platform representatives, and content creators to produce federal policy and industry standard recommendations to advance the creator economy.
Engaging with BKC participants and programming
Beyond their work with their workstream colleagues, fellows are expected to engage with faculty, staff, students, and other members of the BKC and Harvard University communities. Fellows will be required to take part in a weekly community meeting; they also will be expected to regularly participate in the Center’s programming to learn with and from others and strengthen their own work. This programming could include speaking at and/or participating in workshops, research sessions, and working groups, as well as collaborating with other members of the broader BKC community.
Time and location commitments
The Fellows program will run for the full academic year, from September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026. Fellows are expected to be free of the majority of their regular commitments so that they may fully devote themselves to their fellowship and Center workstream. We recognize that fellows who bring their own funding might have specific commitments due to their funding arrangements.
Fellows are required to be in residence in Cambridge, MA from September 2025 through May 2026. During the time spent in residence, they will work from the Berkman Klein Center’s offices on the Harvard Law School campus.
Who Should Apply?
The Berkman Klein Center seeks to be a space for both established and rising scholars and non-academics. Qualifications for these tracks are below, and we ask that candidates specify which track for which they are applying for in their application form.
Our Academic Fellowship track welcomes applications from faculty…
- for whom serving as a professor is their full-time commitment, including assistant, associate, and full professors or equivalent roles in countries outside of the U.S.;
- from any discipline whose scholarship deeply engages with ideas related to either AI or social media and networked communication;
- who have a clear vision of a potential project and a clear sense of the problem(s) their work is addressing;
who are eager to engage in a cohort setting and work in collaboration with other workstream participants to develop a shared plan, projects, and events to advance the topic as a group; - who have prior published work in this space and a demonstrated record of contributing to public and scholarly conversations.
Our Post-Doctoral Fellowship track welcomes applications from scholars…
- from any discipline whose scholarship deeply engages with ideas related to either AI or social media and networked communication;
- who have a clear vision of a potential project and a clear sense of the problem(s) their work is addressing;
- who are eager to engage in a cohort setting and work in collaboration with other workstream participants to develop a shared plan, projects, and events to advance the topic as a group; who have prior or upcoming published work in this space and a demonstrated record of contributing to public and scholarly conversations.
- Note: Post-doctoral fellows must have recently received a doctoral degree or other terminal degree, or will by the start of the appointment in September 2025. Individuals who will be enrolled in a degree program in the Fall of 2025 are not eligible for this position.
Our Non-Academic Fellowship track welcomes applications from experts…
- from any professional background whose expertise deeply engages with ideas related to either AI or social media and networked communication;
- who have a clear vision of a potential project and a clear sense of the problem(s) their work is addressing;
- who are eager to engage in a cohort setting and work in collaboration with other workstream participants to develop a shared plan, projects, and events to advance the topic as a group;
- who have prior published work in this space and a demonstrated record of contributing to public and scholarly conversations.
International applicants: We work with the Harvard International Office (HIO) to sponsor visa paperwork for our eligible international fellows. An outline of the visa application process and requirements may be found on the HIO website at: http://hio.harvard.edu/scholar-visa-process.
All participants must be eligible to receive a stipend; further details below.
Support
Stipend
Fellowship funding: BKC has a limited pool of funding to support fellows who are taking unpaid leave from their home institutions or who do not have any other outside funding. These fellows are eligible to receive stipends of up to $75,000 annually. Specific stipend arrangements will be discussed as part of the interview process.
External funding: For applicants on paid sabbatical from their home institution or who are otherwise supported by external funding, BKC will complement this funding with an additional stipend totalling $10,000.
Important notes:
- If one is based in the United States but is not a United States citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident (“green card” holder), one’s immigration status must allow for the receipt of a fellows stipend.
- Fellows may be responsible for tax reporting on their stipends. Please review additional information about stipends issued through Harvard University.
Access to University Resources
- Space: For their time spent in Cambridge, fellows will be provided with shared office/work space. We endeavor to provide comfortable and productive spaces for coworking and flexible use by the community.
- Health Insurance: Fellows should review Harvard University Health policy to determine if they are eligible to purchase health insurance through the university.
- Library Access: All fellows will be provided with access to Harvard’s extensive libraries and research facilities.
- Courses: Fellows may seek opportunities to audit classes across Harvard University. However, they must ask for direct permission from the professor of the desired class.
- Campus Resources: Fellows are welcome and encouraged to connect with Harvard University’s research centers, initiatives, resource groups, associations, organizations, and specialized offices.
- Teaching at Harvard: Fellows may be able to teach at one of several Harvard schools. This would be determined on a case-by-case basis, arranged directly by the Fellow in collaboration with the respective schools’ administrations. BKC cannot promise any teaching engagement during the program.
Community Principles, Policies, and Resources
The Berkman Klein Center community, and how we interact with one another, is governed by norms and policies developed and maintained by Harvard University and Harvard Law School. The Center maintains a page to highlight community principles, policies, and resources, as well as other applicable policies and resources for accessing additional University support.
Notice of Nondiscrimination
Harvard Law School does not discriminate against any person on the basis of age, race, color, national origin, sex (including gender identity and gender expression, as well as pregnancy), genetic information, ancestry, religion, caste, creed, veteran status, disability, military service, sexual orientation or political beliefs in admission to, access to, treatment in, or employment
in its programs and activities.
APPLY HERE
Application
Applications will be accepted until Wednesday, April 30, at 11:59 pm Eastern Time.
In addition to personal and work-related questions, applicants will be required to upload the following documents. Please consider this information carefully and ensure your attachments meet these requirements:
- CV
- 1-2 page cover letter: Indicate interest in a specific workstream and share relevant background. If applicable, kindly alert us to any relevant deadlines at your home institution that might affect your ability to accept a fellowship appointment.
- 2-3 page project proposal: Please share one of the following:
- A summary of a past project, including outcomes and the publishing of any results. What did your project set out to accomplish? What were the outcomes? How does this project reflect your work, skill, and interests? How would you apply these to the initiatives at the Berkman Klein Center?
- A proposal for a new project – please include its goals, an estimate of related costs, and requested staff support (if applicable). What question or problem will the project address? How will the project address it? How, specifically, would you propose using your time as a BKC fellow to advance this project? How would this project benefit from collaborations with other faculty, staff, students, and fellows in your workstream?
- 1-3 work samples
If contacted for an interview, you should be prepared to share reference letters from two references.
Please note that uploads need to be PDFs. Individual files must not exceed 5 MBs.
These are the questions in the Apptracker, after name and contact info:
- Which one of the following five workstreams are you applying for?
- AI Interpretability Ethics and Implications
- Agentic AI Protocols and Risk Mitigations
- Artificial General Intelligence Futurecasting and Policy Development
- Tech, Tools, and Practices for Improving University Discourse
- Safety Solutions for Social Media
- Which of the Fellowship tracks are you applying for?
- Academic Fellowship (you are a full-time faculty member)
- Post-doc Fellowship (you recently received a doctoral degree or other terminal degree, or will have by the start of the appointment in September 2025)
- Non-academic Fellowship (you are an accomplished practitioner from outside the academy)
- Which fellowship stipend pathway are you applying for?
- Fellowship funding, up to $75,000
- External funding, to be complemented by $10,000 from the Berkman Klein Center
- If you are applying to be considered for fellowship funding from the Berkman Klein Center, what is the amount of funding you seek?
- N/A - I am applying to be externally funded
- $10,000 - 25,000
- $25,001 - $50,000
- $50,001 - $75,000
- If you are requesting fellowship funding from the Berkman Klein Center, is your ability to accept a fellowship contingent on the receipt of these requested funds?
- N/A - I am applying to be externally funded
- Yes
- No
- Our fellowship program requires fellows to work from Cambridge from at least September - May. If selected as a fellow, would you commit to living in the Greater Boston area and working from the Berkman Klein Center offices for the course of this time?
- Yes
- No
- Current home institution
- Current title
- Current country of residency
- What is your primary discipline? If you have two, there is a second question below to indicate the second discipline.
- If you have one, what is your additional primary discipline?
- In what sector do you primarily work?
- Have you ever held an appointment at the Berkman Klein Center before? If yes, please share the program name(s) and date(s) here.
- Is there any additional information you'd like to share?