NY Public Library Fellowships: Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies 2026 (USA)

FellowshipsCall for applications: Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Fellowships 2026, New York Public Library, NY, USA. Deadline: 25 August 2025.

The New York Public Library is pleased to offer the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Fellowship to support advanced research on The New York Public Library’s holdings of materials from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, South Asia, Central Asia, and their diasporas in the United States. Fellowships are open to Ph.D. candidates, post-doctoral scholars, and independent researchers with projects that would significantly benefit from research drawing on collections accessible at The New York Public Library. Projects requiring access to original materials including manuscripts, archives, books, photographs, prints, maps, newspapers, and journals will be given preference, but all worthy projects will be considered. Applicants studying the humanities as well as those working in the visual, auditory/performing, and literary arts are welcome to apply.

Established with the generous support of Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos, the Fellowship Program will support one fellow annually for three months with a stipend of $25,000. Each fellow will have full access to the Library’s collections and staff, as well as a dedicated place to work in the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities.

The annual fellow will be selected following a review of applications by NYPL staff and an external committee of scholars, librarians, curators, and creatives. The Library will also explore how to support international scholars with visa requirements. The Library will continue offering this annual fellowship through 2029. Application information will be made available on this website each year.

Other fellowship opportunities at the New York Public Library may be of interest, if other topics in their collection are of interest.

UNESCO Chair Conference: Exploring Intercultural Competences in an African Context (Morocco)

EventsExploring Intercultural Competences in an African Context. UNESCO Chair on Intercultural Competences, Rabat, Morocco, 29 Sept-2 Oct 2025. Deadline: 1 Sept 2025.

The UNESCO Chair on Intercultural Competences hosted by Stellenbosch University has organized a second international conference, with contributions from academics and researchers, professionals, practitioners, educators, innovators, leaders and organisations with an interest in the theme. ​

The specific sub themes are:

  • How do aspects of Intercultural Competence intersect, interact and influence climate action, gender equality, or peacebuilding?
  • The existence and use of intercultural practices in pre-colonial times.
  • Intercultural tools available to the practitioner (for example; Cultural diversity and ethics; Ethical encounters and interactions; Culturally responsive teaching; Collaborative Online International (intercultural) Learning (COIL); tools for understanding values across multi-cultural and multi-religious societies)​
  • African Youth Perspectives on Intercultural Competence​

Responding to the theme and sub-themes above, organizers look forward to the sharing of research, reflections, lived experiences and examples from practice in the form of Workshops, Parallel sessions, and Poster Presentations.

U Copenhagen: Postdoctoral Researcher in International Migration Studies (Denmark)

Postdocs
Postdoctoral researcher in International Migration Studies, Saxo Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.  Deadline: 7 September 2025.

The Saxo Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), invite applications for a postdoctoral position in international migration studies from 1 January 2026. The position is a fixed-term position for 24 months.

The postdoc will be based on the Institute’s innterdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Migration Studies (AMIS). They seek a strong candidate with a dynamic profile in the broad, international field of migration studies, who can document an impressive track record of humanities and/or social science research on matters relating to the topics in the REGENERATION research project below.

The postdoctoral position is part of the research project REGENERATION, financed by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, studying the changes in gender norms and practices women Ukrainian without male fen in Denmark after the Russian among 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Investigating the growing phenomenon of “feminized displacement” to the EU, this project focuses on gender by following women’s re-settlement in Denmark, studying how they re-established everyday structures, create, and elseient toward the future through relations with kin (family and acquaintances) and through encountering Danish institutions’ locally and Ukrainian institutions transnationally. The project aims to develop a novel analytical framework to understand processes of “re-degeneration,” concepts on the re-making of life after war, relatedness with kin, institutions and the state, and intersectionality.

The postdoc project focus on women with children and qualitative applies, visual and ethnographic methods in studying their everyday life, local and transnational relations and encounters with the Danish welfare state (Work-package 2).

In two other sub-studies of the larger research project, the focus is on gender norms and practices Ukrainian women without conferred children and welfare state actors, working with women Ukrainian.

Middlebury Language Schools: Fellows for Peace 2026 (USA)

Fellowships

Fellows for Peace, Middlebury Language Schools, Middlebury College, VT, USA, summer 2026. Deadline: 15 December 2025.

The Fellows for Peace fellowships are awarded to 12 languages and cover tuition, housing, and food for one summer at any level of study. The Fellows for Peace fellowship is a highly competitive, merit-based full tuition, on-campus housing and food award.

Successful fellowship applications typically have a strong background in peace work or conflict resolution, broadly construed. They have represented a wide range of professions, from NGO work to government service, journalism to law, medicine to the arts, and so on. Applications should have a plan for future peace work and knowledge of the region and relevant issues. The fellowship committee gives more weight to accomplishments and related future projects than it does to academic qualifications alone.

Robyn Penman: What If…? New Ideas for Better Social Worlds

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What if…? new ideas for better social worlds by Robyn Penman, on Substack.

Robyn Penman, longtime contributor to the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, has just started publishing a series of essays on Substack. Her focus will be on how to improve our social world.

Offering new ways for making sense of and acting into our social world so that we can collectively make a more just and more democratic society—one that we actually want to live in.

Her focus is not intercultural dialogue explicitly, but her discussion has implications for it. For example: “Our storehouse of stories is our storehouse for meaning-making. This cultural and personal storehouse of meaning provides the rationale for how we act across the economic, political, legal, and personal spheres of our social world.”

Read, and enjoy.

UCL: Digital Intercultural Communication (UK)

“JobLecturer in Digital Intercultural Communication, University College London, England, UK. Deadline: 21 August 2025.

The post-holder will contribute to Masters, PhD and other programmes and research, knowledge exchange and consultancy activities in the International Centre for Intercultural Studies and in the Department of Culture, Communication and Media at University College London. Alongside the demonstration of a broad theoretical and practical understanding of intercultural communication, the post-holder will have knowledge and expertise in Digital Intercultural Communication. We are seeking a candidate who not only engages critically with issues of culture and communication in digital contexts but also demonstrates a robust understanding of digital technologies, including current and emerging tools, platforms and digital environments. The candidate will take a lead in developing this aspect of the MA Intercultural Communication. They will also play a significant role in the planning and development of the International Centre for Intercultural Studies. This post is available from 1st September 2025.

With a completed PhD in Language and Intercultural Communication, or closely relevant subject areas, you will also have a track-record of relevant and high-quality research publications for inclusion in Research Excellence Framework assessments.

American U in Cairo: International Programs and Services (Egypt)

“JobSenior Director of International Programs and Services Office, American University of Cairo, Egypt. Deadline: 21 August 2025.

Reporting to the Associate Provost for Enrollment Management, the senior director promotes the global visibility of the AUC by implementing internationalization initiatives. The senior director oversees the day-to-day management of partnerships, institutional relationships and cooperation contracts with international universities and other institutions all over the world for the purpose of globalization. He or She enhances the international student’s experience at the AUC by launching the international students’ engagement plans to ensure the integration of international students within the AUC student body. The senior director oversees the exchange and study abroad program for AUC students to ensure the diversification of the international experience offered. He or She provides leadership and direction for International Programs and Services (IPSO) to deepen student knowledge and direct experience of the world and help them develop intercultural sensitivity. The job holder oversees the incoming faculty- led short study abroad programs at the AUC and ensures their integration within the AUC community to further enhance internationalization. He or She oversees market analysis, strategy formulation, annual planning, and implementation and evaluation of recruitment activities for study abroad and exchange students. This shall aim at increasing the number of international students, hence, promote for more internationalization of the AUC. He or She supports the Associate Provost for Enrollment Management in promoting academic collaborations like dual and joint degrees with faculty from other universities

U Cambridge: PhD Studentship: Colombo: Layered Histories in the Global South City (UK)

“Studentships“Ph.D. Studentship: Colombo: Layered Histories in the Global South City Studentship, University of Cambridge, England, UK. Deadline: 31 August 2025.

The UKRI-funded 5-year project, ‘Colombo: Layered Histories in the Global South City’, selected for funding by the European Research Council under its ‘HORIZON’ programme, is recruiting to its doctoral studentship. This is a fully funded full-time international studentship for three years, commencing January 2026. The prospective doctoral student will focus their attention within the broad field of the ‘Environmental and/or cultural history of Colombo’, ideally in the early modern or modern era. Given the project’s aim to generate dialogue between Sri Lanka and Europe, candidates applying from Sri Lanka are especially encouraged.

Colombo has a deeply layered imperial past. It came under a succession of European empires, Portuguese (first trading post in 1518), Dutch (1656-1796) and British (1796-1948). It was also pivotal to the early globalisation of Islam and has housed a series of diasporic and minority communities. This project interrogates how invaders and residents made a city in an unstable environment at the centre of the Indian Ocean, in which arose a diverse society, generating an abundance of cultural production and a sequence of violent politics. The four pathways of research are as follows:

  • In environmental terms, this multiply-colonised and repeatedly-engineered city is built in a wetland without a significant natural harbour;

  • In social terms, in a heavily nationalised state, the city has resisted indigeneity, as it is inhabited by many minority communities with long narrations of origin;

  • As for culture, Colombo was represented in keeping with recurrent motifs, as a site of transit across the Indian Ocean, including for enslaved and indentured labour as well as settlers;

  • And on politics, the heavy work needed, at the bridge of sea and land set one context for the rise of urban violence between communities in the midst of civil war in addition to sustained strikes and new political movements.

    At its broadest perspective, the project aims to develop resources with which to consider the pasts, presents and futures of this global South city as located within the remit of other global South cities elsewhere.

The doctoral candidate’s work on this project will fall under themes 2) environment and/or 4) culture. This five-year project is led by Professor Sujit Sivasundaram. The successful applicant will join a team of researchers, including postdoctoral fellows and an existing doctoral student. Their research will contribute to a wider collaborative project.

The doctoral studentship will pay full tuition fees at the University of Cambridge over three years. It also provides a maintenance allowance of £20,780 per year and a budget for training and research.

This studentship is only open to international applicants (excluding UK, including EU and EEA). Candidates applying from Sri Lanka are especially encouraged given the grant’s formal aim to generate dialogue on these research questions between Sri Lanka and Europe. Preference will be given to candidates demonstrating competence in both Sinhala and Tamil, with competence in one of these language for research purposes being an essential requirement for the successful candidate.

CFP U Cambridge: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Empire, Colonialism, & Anticolonialism (UK)

ConferencesCall for papers: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Empire, Colonialism, and Anticolonialism, University of Cambridge, England, 17 October 2025. Deadline: 30 August 2025.

Empire, colonialism, and anticolonialism have been central drivers of world history for the past centuries, and they continue to shape present day realities. From ongoing practices of settler colonialism, through to climate colonialism, economic imperialism, and resurgent far-right nationalisms drawing upon imageries of empire, it seems to be obvious that ‘empire’ and ‘colonialism’ have never gone away. At the same time, we are in a moment of history where we are also witnessing a proliferation of resistance against empire and colonialism: from the halls of universities (as seen in the Palestine encampments) through to frontline battles against settlers, militarized violence, and nefarious capital.

Different disciplines across the arts, humanities, and social sciences have highlighted different dimensions of these processes of colonialism and anti-colonialism. At this one-day conference, organizers hope to put these different disciplines in conversation with one another, taking the strongest tools from different disciplines, such that they can produce a truly interdisciplinary understanding of empire, colonialism, anti-colonialism, and decolonization.

With this in mind, they are issuing this call for papers for presenters from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, open to presenters at all career stages. Expressions of interest in all areas related to empire, colonialism, anti-colonialism, and decolonization are welcome, including (but not limited to):
• Historical and comparative accounts of empire, colonialism, anti-colonialism, and decolonization.
•    Tracing material forms of resistance to empire.
• Conceptual and empirical work highlighting the importance of anticolonial thought and practice.
•  Considerations of the role of universities (and education broadly) in anti/colonialism and decolonization.
•  Tracing links between the social, political, cultural, and economic organisations of metropoles and colonies.
• Provocations and discussions of ongoing practices of colonization / anti-colonialism.

Circle U: From Recognition to Inclusion: Rethinking European Languages in Education (Germany and Online)

EventsFrom recognition to inclusion: Rethinking European languages in education, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, and online, 26 September 2025, 10:00–17:30 CET.

Across Europe, educational systems tend to focus on hegemonial national languages—German in Germany, French in France, and so on—as legitimate means for classroom interaction. It is also these languages that are associated with European nation-states, understood as “modern languages” for educational curricula, and targeted as desirable competences in “European languages” by multilingualism policies.

However, the linguistic reality of Europe is far more diverse. Languages such as Turkish, Arabic, Russian, Kurdish, and Romani are spoken daily by large communities in Europe, and in this sense they are European languages, yet they are rarely treated as valuable cultural or educational resources.

Held on the occasion of the European Day of Languages, this open conversation explores how educational systems might move beyond narrow definitions of “European languages” and “multilingualism” towards practices of genuine linguistic inclusion—where all students’ languages are made visible, valued, and meaningfully integrated into educational life.

The programme features a keynote by Christoph Schroeder (University of Potsdam), followed by a panel discussion and a commentary from Elizabeth Beloe (German Federal Association of Networks of Migrant Organisations) on broader societal power dynamics, as well as roundtable sessions on educational policy and school culture & belonging. The panel brings together researchers, students, and practitioners who will share insights from research and practice.

This is a Circle U Open Conversation. Circle U is made up of nine European universities creating international opportunities. Other Circle U activities can be found here.