Applications are now open for the African Fellow Awards. Candidates must submit their applications by March 1, 2022.
About the HFG Foundation Young African Scholars Program:
Harry Guggenheim established this foundation to support research on violence, aggression, and dominance because he was convinced that solid, thoughtful, scholarly and scientific research, experimentation, and analysis would in the end accomplish more than the usual solutions impelled by urgency rather than understanding. We do not yet hold the solution to violence, but better analyses, more acute predictions, constructive criticisms, and new, effective ideas will come in time from investigations such as those supported by our grants.
The foundation places a priority on the study of urgent problems of violence and aggression in the modern world and also encourages related research projects in neuroscience, genetics, animal behavior, the social sciences, history, criminology, and the humanities which illuminate modern human problems. Grants have been made to study aspects of violence related to youth, family relationships, media effects, crime, biological factors, intergroup conflict related to religion, ethnicity, and nationalism, and political violence deployed in war and sub-state terrorism, as well as processes of peace and the control of aggression.
Every two years, the Foundation selects a cohort of Harry Frank Guggenheim African Fellows. Approximately a dozen emerging scholars are recognized for projects judged to be of high quality and closely relevant to the Foundation’s interest in violence.
The Foundation welcomes proposals for the African Fellow Awards from any of the social and natural sciences or allied disciplines that promise to increase understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence and aggression. Highest priority is given to research that can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence and aggression in the modern world. The proposed project must relate directly to the African continent.
The Foundation is interested in violence related to many subjects, including, but not limited to, the following:
- War
- Crime
- Terrorism
- Family and intimate-partner relationships
- Climate instability and natural resource competition
- Racial, ethnic, and religious conflict
- Political extremism and nationalism
The Foundation supports research that investigates the basic mechanisms in the production of violence, but primacy is given to proposals that make a compelling case for the relevance of potential findings for policies intended to reduce these ills. Likewise, historical research is considered to the extent that it is relevant to a current situation of violence. Examinations of the effects of violence are appropriate for a proposal only if a strong case can be made that these outcomes serve, in turn, as causes of future violence.
The African Fellow Awards
Fellowships are offered to individual scholars for a period of two years. The African Fellow Awards include an in-person methods workshop on the African continent, fieldwork research grants of $10,000 each, mentoring from senior African and Africanist scholars, sponsorship at an international conference to present research findings, and editorial and publication assistance through a writing workshop geared to support and prepare scholars to write for and submit to international peer-reviewed journals and other outlets for their research.
Timing
Candidates for the African Fellow Awards may apply online annually between December 1 and March 1. Applications must be submitted by March 1, for a decision in June. Final decisions are made by the Board of Directors at its meeting in June. Applicants will be informed promptly by email of the Board’s decision. The program begins with a research proposal workshop held on the continent.
Eligibility
Applicants for the fellowship may be citizens of any country. They must be aged 40 or younger, currently enrolled in an accredited Ph.D. program at an African higher-education institution, and living on the continent.
Application
The March 1 application deadline occurs every other year, in accordance with the program application cycle. Applicants must create an account to access the application. The guidelines are also available through the link below.
https://www.hfg.org/african-fellows/
