Othering & Belonging Institute Summer Fellowship
Application Deadline: 8:00 pm PST, January 15, 2023
Application Portal (https://otheringbelonginginstitute.submittable.com/submit)
Note: Application portal requires users to create or login to a Submittable account
NOTE: Othering & Belonging Institute programs are operating remotely. The 2023 Summer Fellowship will be held remotely for the safety of all staff and fellows. Fellows will work from their home locations for the entirety of the fellowship, and all fellowship meetings and activities will take place online.
The Fellowship
The Othering & Belonging Institute Summer Fellowship is a paid research experience for individuals seeking to develop their research skills by engaging with the Institute’s multidisciplinary research, analysis, policy, and strategic narrative work. The purpose of the fellowship is to build the capacity and network of the next generation of researchers and community leaders who are committed to social and racial justice by providing mentorship and hands-on experience with social science research. In addition to working directly with their staff supervisor on an individual research project (see “Summer Projects” below), fellows engage as a cohort in weekly meetings or workshops on Institute frameworks, research methodologies, and contemporary social justice issues throughout the summer.
· Applications open: December 5, 2022
· Applications close: January 15, 2023 8:00pm PST
· Fellowship period: May 16 to August 16, 2023
· Time Commitment: Part-time, 20 hours per week
· Location: The 2023 Summer Fellowship will be held remotely.
*Working Hours: Fellowship programs and meetings will be held during the Institute’s working hours from 9am-6pm Pacific Time.
· Compensation: Each fellow’s hourly compensation rate is based on years of education completed, the University’s fixed pay scale and equity standards. Rates range from $23/hr to $30/hr depending on education level.
What this Fellowship is NOT:
· Funding or support for a dissertation, individual research project, or independently selected research topic
· A fellowship for advanced PhD students (post second year of PhD) or professionals with extensive full-time research experience
· An opportunity to work directly with Institute-affiliated faculty members
· A residential, full-time fellowship
Eligibility
The Summer Fellowship is open to traditional and non-traditional undergraduate students, graduate students within their first or second year of master’s or PhD programs, as well as recent graduates (within two years) of undergraduate or master’s level programs at any university, college, or community college. To be eligible, non-U.S. international students must have visa and U.S. work permit, per UC Berkeley policy.
Summer Projects
Summer fellows dedicate most of their paid work hours to their individual summer projects. Each fellow will be paired with a lead staff researcher to work on a predetermined summer-long project for a specific research area. Summer projects primarily involve independent, online research oriented toward public policy, systems change, and/or strategic narrative. Tasks will include:
· Background research for new or emerging projects, such as developing research databases, conducting interviews, or writing literature reviews, case studies, and brief research memoranda.
· Supporting ongoing research, such as data gathering, data analysis or assisting with writing sections of a book, reports, discussion papers, or other Institute publications.
· Translating academic work into newsworthy pitches using accessible language and knowledge of current affairs.
Each summer fellow will be matched with one of the following programs based on alignment between their skills, experience, interests, and each program’s project needs:
1. Applied Belonging Research: Research, compile and structure findings on practical applications used to advance Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) initiatives into Belonging initiatives.
2. Climate Justice: Case study research on climate migration & resilience in the U.S.
3. Community Power and Policy Partnerships: Case studies on how communities engage in co-governance over the use of public funds to drive systems change.
4. Democracy & Belonging Forum: Background research on forms of othering across geographies with a focus on Eastern and/or Southeastern Europe.
5. Equity Metrics Program: Background research and quantitative/qualitative analysis related to fair housing and social equity (including, but not limited to, segregation, disparate impact, zoning, and access to opportunity).
6. Global Justice Program: Update the Shahidi Project’s corporate profiles and research current databases to compare pre-existing data with an application programming interface (API), and integrate new materials into the project’s website.
7. Just Public Finance: Background research identifying gaps between rigorous academic and advocate research literature and the needs of grassroots community-based organizations related to water access.
8. Othering & Belonging Research: Bibliographic research related to othering and belonging, including, but not limited to, studies on group-based marginality and inequality, interventions that promote belonging, historical and sociological research on group violence, and political change related to group dynamics and identity.
9. Public Health: Collaborate with OBI public health researchers to conduct research and write a case study/blog post about undoing structural racism in a health institution (e.g. hospital, healthcare system, public health department, or social service).
10. Housing Segregation: Research, conduct interviews, prepare memo, and draft articles relating to developments in local housing policy.
11. Strategic Communications: Research and production assistance for social media projects related to promoting acts of solidarity and cross-group care and creative research dissemination on TikTok.
Responsibilities & Expectations
All Summer Fellows are expected to:
· Demonstrate a genuine commitment to social and racial justice, equity, and civil liberties.
· Remotely, work 20 hours per week for three months (May 16 to August 16, 2023).
· Engage in collective learning as a cohort by completing required readings and participating in regularly scheduled workshops with Institute staff, cohort meetings, and team-building activities.
· Present the findings or results of their summer project to the Institute at the end of the summer.
Minimum Qualifications
· Research proficiency
· Basic computer literacy
· Ability to prioritize tasks and meet deadlines
· Excellent verbal and written communication skills
· Excellent interpersonal communication skills and political acumen
· Interested in and experience supporting social justice and equity issues
· Self-starter with the ability to initiate and complete work with limited supervision
· Stellar organizational skills and ability to work independently and collaboratively
Desirable Skills
· Qualitative research skills, including coding qualitative data, such as interview and focus group transcripts, developing research databases and writing literature reviews
· Quantitative research skills, including but not limited to data collection; data entry; statistical analysis; and retrieval, compilation, manipulation, and synthesis of Census Bureau data
· Multimedia and editorial skills, such as writing and editing electronic newsletters, video recording and editing using Adobe Premiere, and audio editing using Adobe Audition
· Proficiency in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop, R, Stata, ArcGIS or Microsoft Excel