Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship Program

The doctoral dissertation research fellowship supports 6-12 months of dissertation research on a topic related to peace, security, and development. This program also offers two workshops each year to help fellows to further develop and strengthen their research, engage key literature in their fields, embark on fieldwork-based research, and develop their capacity for scholarly writing, including academic publications.

Funding Information

• Amount: costs of up to US $15,000

Thematic Priorities

• The program features a thematic focus on peace, security, and development in order to renew basic research agendas and strengthen interdisciplinary social science research capacity addressing these issues.
• The program encourages innovative research on peace, security, and development topics, moving the boundaries of scholarship and research by exploring concrete linkages between these themes. We envision supporting a diverse set of projects seeking to shed light on a range of economic, political, social, conflict and peacebuilding processes using evidence-based research.
• List of prospective issues that are considered relevant to Next Gen fellowships:
  • Causes and drivers of conflict
  • Institutional and local approaches to conflict prevention, management, and resolution
  • National and Regional approaches to peace, security, and development
  • Identity and conflict
  • Gender, youth, conflict, and peacebuilding
  • Conflict, peace and human mobilities
  • Histories, Arts and Cultures of conflict and peace
  • State-Society relations
  • Economic and Humanitarian perspectives to conflict and peace
  • Democracy, human rights, and development
  • Post-conflict development, governance and reconstruction
  • Peace agreements, transitional justice and reconciliation
  • International justice, war crimes, peace, and development
  • Law and constitutionalism
  • Climate change adaptation and mitigation practices and peace
  • Natural resource governance, conflict, peace and development
  • Climate Change, conflict, peace, and security
  • Globalization and emerging insecurities
  • Peace education and African literatures
  • Media, digital technology AI, peace, and security

Eligibility Criteria

• All applicants must:
  • be citizens of any sub-Saharan African country
  • be enrolled and working towards a PhD in an accredited university, or affiliated to an institution in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda
  • have a fully developed doctoral dissertation research proposal approved by a graduate school/program at an accredited university in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania or Uganda
  • The program prioritizes applicants holding a faculty position or demonstrating a durable commitment to higher education in Africa, but does not restrict eligibility to such individuals.
  • The program seeks to promote diversity and encourages women to apply.

For more information, visit Social Science Research Council.