Currently 12 active fellowships open to applicants in Worldwide, across AI, arts, film, journalism, research, tech and cross-disciplinary practice. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
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The Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, run by the Research Grants Council, funds around 400 new full-time PhD students a year at eight Hong Kong universities, in any discipline, including AI, computing and data science programmes and practice-led art research (Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Visual Arts promotes the scheme for practice-led and practice-based PhDs with access to its studios). FUNDING: HKD 344,400 a year stipend and HKD 14,400 a year travel allowance for up to three years, with university top-ups (HKBU: Elite Scholar Award HKD 40,000 a year, extra travel funds, tuition waiver, housing). ELIGIBILITY: anyone seeking admission as a new full-time PhD student at a participating university, irrespective of country of origin, prior work experience or ethnic background; selection weighs academic excellence, research ability, communication and leadership. HOW TO APPLY: first make the Initial Application to the RGC (open since 1 September 2026) by 12:00 noon Hong Kong time, 1 December 2026, then apply to up to two programmes at one or two universities by their own deadlines (listed as 1 December 2026, 11:59pm Hong Kong time; some fall right after the RGC deadline, so apply early). Many departments, HKBU's AVA included, require a proposed supervisor.
The Nieman Foundation brings around two dozen journalists to Harvard each year for two semesters of study, reflection and community, one of the oldest and best-known midcareer journalism fellowships in the world. Fellows design their own course of study, audit classes across Harvard's schools and take part in Nieman's own seminars and master classes; many use the year to deepen a beat such as technology, AI accountability, science or press freedom. WHAT YOU GET: a USD 87,500 stipend paid over the nine-month academic year (2026-27 figure), plus allowances toward housing, childcare and health insurance. WHO IS ELIGIBLE: working journalists, staff or freelance, in any medium, with at least five years of full-time media experience; open to applicants from any country. Freelancers may use a recent supervising editor for one of the three required recommendation letters. Special fellowships within the program include the Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellowship in Journalism Innovation. TO APPLY: applications for the class of 2028 open in the first week of October 2026 and require two essays (personal statement and study proposal), work samples and three recommendation letters. DEADLINE: 1 December 2026 for international applicants; 31 January 2027 for US citizens.
The Mensch Maschine VISIT Residency Program is an annual fellowship offering four fully funded fellowships to artists from around the world, run by the JUNGE AKADEMIE of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) with VISIT, the artist-in-residence programme of the E.ON Foundation, E-WERK Luckenwalde and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw). The 2027 edition particularly encourages projects at the intersection of art, energy and ecology exploring the theme ENERGY GHOSTS: the unseen dimensions of energy approached through mythology, cosmology or speculative fiction, the invisible infrastructures, histories and residues that haunt contemporary life, and energy as an ecological, political or spiritual force. Proposals are welcome from visual art, performance, film, installation, sound, writing and new media. WHAT YOU GET: EUR 20,000 per fellow for artist fees and production costs of a new project (research and development, travel, material and presentation costs); three fellows receive studio space and accommodation at E-WERK Luckenwalde (a former power station about 40 minutes south of Berlin), one is accommodated by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. The three-month residency runs roughly September to November 2027 with on-site presence of at least 75% required, a retreat at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw in September 2027, events across the three venues, and a closing symposium in October 2027 at the Akademie der Künste where fellows show work in progress alongside the 2026 cohort. JURY: Nolan Oswald Dennis; Chus Martinez (Institute Art Gender Nature, TBA21); Sarah Johanna Theurer (Fondation Beyeler); Anh-Linh Ngo (Akademie der Künste); and Tiara Roxanne. APPLICATION: via the VISIT portal at visit-energy.com/bewerben. DEADLINE: 1 December 2026, 23:59 CET.
Stanford's nine-month residential fellowship for journalists and people who work in service of journalism (editors, producers, photographers, audience and community builders, publishers, operations and strategy staff). Fellows bring a question about journalism they cannot let go of rather than a fixed project, and pursue it with a small international cohort, individual coaching, customised workshops and the run of Stanford; many fellows work on AI, platforms, information ecosystems and audience trust. ELIGIBILITY: at least five years of professional experience (student work and internships don't count); no degree or newsroom background required; freelancers must do most of their work in journalism. Not eligible: PR or communications staff, government employees, full-time academics, staff of non-editorially-independent media, degree seekers, book or reporting projects. APPLICATION: via SurveyMonkey Apply (jsk.smapply.org); deadline 2 December 2026 at 1pm Pacific, no extensions. Info webinars on 21 October and 5, 6 and 12 November 2026.
The Simon-Skjodt Center funds policy-relevant research on preventing genocide and mass atrocities, from any discipline. Fellows work non-residentially for a year and present at a workshop in Washington, DC. ELIGIBILITY: enrolled PhD students or researchers within 5 years of completing a PhD, any nationality, any discipline. APPLY via the Smartsheet form linked from the fellowship page. DEADLINE: 13 December 2026, 11:59 pm ET.
Mozilla Foundation's 2027-28 Fellowship backs 10 people working on technology that is "too early, too unexpected, or too ambitious for anyone else to fund", reimagining emerging technology while its future is still being decided. Each Fellow receives up to USD 125,000 over 12 months (USD 100,000 stipend plus USD 25,000 project budget) to lead an independent project. Mozilla's fellowship work spans responsible AI, digital rights, online privacy and surveillance, internet freedom, open source and data governance; listed 2027 focus areas include business models for a post-agentic web (see the call page for the full list). This replaces the nomination-only process of the 2026 cycle with an open letter-of-intent route. APPLICATION: submit a Letter of Intent by 17 December 2026, 11:59 PM Pacific; shortlisted applicants are invited to later stages, which may include interviews. The fellowship begins 1 June 2027.
The Internet Society Fellowship supports people advancing Internet connectivity, policy or security in their communities. Fellows design and implement a practical project with deliverables such as policy briefs, research reports, training programs, community engagement initiatives, workshops or technical resources, supported by a stipend of up to USD 5,000, a dedicated mentor, weekly virtual training sessions and funded travel to a global or regional Internet event. IMPORTANT PREREQUISITE: applicants must first complete the Pre-Fellowship Training modules; enrollment for the training runs 23 September to 22 November 2026, and eligible participants receive the Fellowship application link by email within 24 hours of completing it. ELIGIBILITY: open worldwide; requires a high level of English reading, speaking and writing, continuous Internet access throughout the program, a valid passport (six months beyond anticipated travel), at least four hours per week over 10 months, and not currently participating in a 2026 Internet Society fellowship. TIMELINE: applications reviewed on a rolling basis and close 18 December 2026; notifications 19 February 2027; program kick-off 22 February 2027; project execution 1 June to 30 November 2027; graduation early December 2027.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri funds people and teams to build and launch a tool, workflow or product that helps newsrooms, in three tracks: Individual (USD 75,000), Institutional (USD 75,000, paid to a host organisation or the fellow) and Emerging Technology (USD 100,000, where AI or another new technology must be essential to the solution). The output must be a free, open-source resource usable by US journalists; tools limited to one city or state are unlikely to be funded. The fellowship is remote and runs for eight months from 28 June 2027 with an in-person kickoff at RJI and a couple of paid visits. ELIGIBILITY: anyone, anywhere; no age, background or journalism credential required. Applications open 2 November 2026 on Submittable; a shortlist is invited in early to mid February 2027 to submit a fuller application, with finalist interviews 5 to 23 April 2027. DEADLINE: 8 January 2027 (first round; no time zone stated, RJI is on US Central time).
An academic-year fellowship at MIT for journalists covering science, health, technology or the environment, with seminars, MIT and Harvard courses and a self-directed study project. ELIGIBILITY: full-time staff or freelance journalists with at least 3 consecutive years of science, health, technology or environment coverage; international applicants welcome. Applications open 15 November 2026; deadline 9 January 2027.
AIXI Labs is a small London-based non-profit doing AI safety research grounded in algorithmic information theory. Its stated position is that most AI research today is either mathematically clean but narrow, or practical but too opaque for rigorous safety analysis; the lab targets a third category, methods general enough to describe powerful agents and provable enough to support real safety claims, using AIXI (the theoretical model of unbounded artificial superintelligence) and then porting the strongest of those ideas to modern LLM-based agents. The fellowship is a quarterly, rolling programme for researchers who want to work on this agenda under close mentorship from the core team: Cole Wyeth (Founder and Executive Director), Marcus Hutter (Research Director) and Aram Ebtekar (Founding Research Scientist). Fellows pursue a focused research project over roughly a quarter and receive a monthly stipend plus a compute budget for machine-learning work. The fellowship is fully remote, so fellows may work from anywhere in the world or from the London base. RESPONSIBILITIES: pursue a self-directed research project aligned with the lab's algorithmic-information-theoretic approach to AI safety, spanning anything from foundational theory to empirical tests with LLM-based agents; shape the project direction around your own strengths and interests, as the lab supports a range of work within this framework; and contribute papers, blog posts or other written output communicating results to the broader AI safety and ML research communities. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: a research background at the level of a current PhD student (for primarily empirical projects, a master's-level command of the relevant mathematics paired with substantial industry or applied research experience can also qualify); solid grounding in probability, statistics, information theory and reinforcement learning, sufficient to engage seriously with AIXI-style theoretical models (prior expertise in algorithmic information theory or AIXI is NOT required); strong verbal and written communication skills; genuine motivation to reduce existential risk from advanced AI and enthusiasm for the lab's kind of work. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: publications at top ML, AI or theory venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ALT or COLT, though the lab values the strength of your best work over volume; background in algorithmic information theory, computability theory, learning theory or related theoretical computer science; experience fine-tuning, evaluating or red-teaming LLM-based and/or RL agents; prior engagement with the UAI/AIXI community or related fields, including members of the lab's online reading groups. APPLICATIONS are reviewed on a rolling basis and previous applicants remain eligible for later rounds.
The ILIAD Intensive is a four-week, full-time, in-person program for mathematically strong researchers interested in foundational AI alignment, running in London (at LISA) and in Berkeley. It runs five days a week, 10am to 6pm, in cohorts of 15 to 30 participants. CURRICULUM, across five clusters: Alignment (decomposing the alignment problem, pretraining, post-training and deployment, reward learning); Learning (deep learning theory, singular learning theory, training dynamics); Abstractions, Representations and Interpretability (mechanistic interpretability, natural latents); Agency (reinforcement learning, decision theory, agent foundations); and Safety Guarantees (debate, steganography, the limits of interpretability). MONEY: no tuition is charged. Each participant receives a USD 5,000 travel and housing allowance, office space at the venue, and lunch and dinner five days a week. Participants book and pay for their own travel and accommodation out of the allowance. ELIGIBILITY: a strong mathematical background, typically graduate-level study or a completed degree in mathematics, physics or theoretical computer science, though mathematical maturity is weighted more heavily than specific credentials. Research experience, general competence and motivation are also assessed. Prior machine learning or alignment experience is not required. DEADLINE: no fixed closing date is published. A single application covers several upcoming programs and applicants indicate their preferred dates and locations; applications are being accepted for the October 2026 and November 2026 cohorts. HOW TO APPLY: through the application portal at iliad.ac/apply. Questions to contact@iliad.ac.
Robot foundation models (pi-zero, OpenVLA, GR00T and others) are approaching widespread deployment on the back of more than USD 18 billion in funding, and almost nobody is working on their safety. The Physical AI Safety Institute, a new nonprofit founded by Bear Haon and Kaylene Stocking and seeded by a grant from BlueDot Impact, describes itself as a capacity-building organisation growing the community that develops techniques to interpret, align and control robot foundation models. Its research fellowship runs in 12-week cohorts: each fellow works within a stream led by a mentor on a concrete problem in physical AI safety, with mentors drawn from researchers with track records in robot foundation models, mechanistic interpretability, safe control or adversarial robustness for embodied systems. Each cohort ends with a research symposium where fellows present their work. STREAMS: mechanistic interpretability (sparse autoencoders and activation patching for VLA and WAM architectures); adversarial robustness (jailbreaking and prompt injection in the embodied action space); runtime monitoring (detecting when a policy operates outside its competence envelope); sim-to-real safety transfer (do safety behaviours survive deployment on physical hardware); and robot security (cyberattack vectors, data poisoning and supply chain for deployed robot models). WHO SHOULD APPLY: researchers with strong technical foundations in robotics or machine learning and a demonstrated interest in safety; prior safety experience is not required. PROCESS: this stage is an expression of interest, not a full application. The form takes about two minutes and asks you to pick your stream and preferred cohort dates; concrete details including stipend figures and application deadlines are shared through that channel, and neither is published on the site as of listing. PAISI also publishes seven free curriculum modules running from classical robot safety through VLA interpretability, adversarial robustness and runtime monitoring to deployment evaluation, plus a white paper, The Case for Physical AI Safety, at paisi.ai/the-case-for-physical-ai-safety. Contact: bear@paisi.ai.