TCDS Fellowships:

Up to six TCDS Fellowships will be offered for the Fall semester (2002) to advanced postgraduate students or junior faculty able to demonstrate serious commitment to the comparative study of current social, political, and economic transitions taking place in different regions of the world. The Fellowship will offer round-trip travel to New York City and a monthly stipend ($1,500) to cover room and board expenses for the period September-December 2002.

Objectives:

The TCDS Fellowship seeks to encourage and support an environment for new kinds of research which, while focusing on common issues faced by societies undergoing systemic transitions, is informed by expertise on their respective cultural and political contexts and can contribute to a deeper understanding of processes taking place both globally and locally. The TCDS Fellowship is also designed to facilitate opportunities for joint research projects between junior scholars from Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Central Europe and Eastern Europe (incl. NIS), and the United States who are studying similar issues from complementary perspectives. Candidates awarded the Fellowship will be working closely in small teams consisting of young scholars from the New School and scholars from the above-mentioned regions.

Themes & Subjects:

• Public Sphere and Political Culture
• Nationality-Ethnicity-Gender
• Civil Society and Social Change
• Democratization, Political Justice, and Economic Equity

Requirements:

Each recipient of the TCDS Fellowship will be required to audit a departmentally offered seminar addressing one of the themes listed above, and to work closely with the instructor on his or her specific project and with other fellows within one of four small working groups organized according to the themes listed above. Fellowship recipients will also be expected to participate fully in the Fall 2001 TCDS Work-in-Progress Workshop series and to discuss the progress of their research in a workshop session during the fall semester. Final versions of the research papers will be presented at the annual TCDS Fall Conference at the end of December and published as part of the TCDS Working Paper Series

Eligibility:

Fellowships are open to advanced students who are currently working towards their Ph.D. degree and/or teaching at a university. Qualified applicants generally come from the following fields: political science, political philosophy, sociology, economics, and anthropology; and are interested in employing a comparative perspective. Applicants should demonstrate commitment to both scholarly research and involvement in civil society and civic organizations. Preference will be given to applicants who are alumni of TCDS Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institutes in Cracow, Cape Town, or Guadalajara, and to those whose projects show creativity and relevance to both social science in general and their own society in particular.

How to Apply:

Interested applicants should submit a 1-2 page statement of purpose describing their proposed research project, how it relates to any of the four themes of the TCDS Fellowship, and how it would benefit from a collaborative and international research setting; a CV; evidence of English language skills; and two letters of reference to: Karolina Szmagalska, Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, New School University, 65 Fifth Avenue, Room 405, New York, NY 10003, USA. Applications can be submitted via e-mail (szmagalk@newschool.edu) or fax (+1-212-229-5894). Please direct all inquiries to Timo Lyyra at tel. +1-212-229-5580 or e-mail lyyra@newschool.edu.

The application deadline is April 22, 2002.