Call for Applications: 2026–2027 Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Research Fellowships

Please note that the deadline to apply for this fellowship was December 14, 2025. We are no longer accepting applications. For questions or information about future opportunities, please contact scpgresearch@ushmm.org.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide seeks applicants from early-career scholars for its Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Research Fellowship. The fellowship will provide support for policy-relevant research on the prevention or mitigation of mass atrocities.

Background

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum teaches that the Holocaust was preventable and that by heeding warning signs and taking early action, individuals and governments can save lives. The Founding Chairman of the Museum, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, hoped the Museum would do for victims of genocide today what was not done for the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide is dedicated to advancing research and education focused on understanding warning signs, analyzing lessons learned from past cases, and providing in-depth reports on countries where crimes are ongoing or at serious risk, and that are receiving insufficient governmental or public attention.

One of the Center’s strategic goals is to address gaps in policy-relevant knowledge on atrocity prevention, including by conducting, commissioning, and encouraging others to conduct timely and high-quality research.

Fellowship Description

Research on the prevention of mass atrocities is growing, yet policy makers continue to confront limits to our knowledge about how to address risks of large-scale, systematic violence against civilian populations. The Center recently conducted a systematic review of three-plus decades of research about 15 types of policy action, or tools, that are sometimes used to help prevent mass atrocities. We found that existing research leaves significant gaps on certain topics of great interest to policy makers; methodological and data availability obstacles make it difficult for any study to measure the causal impact of preventive actions; and the use of different concepts and definitions, methods, and levels of analysis makes it difficult to synthesize evidence across multiple studies.

In the executive summary for the project’s initial release, we concluded that “more of the same will not address policy needs” for research about atrocity prevention. We recommended that researchers “work to develop a 10-year collaborative research program to help fill critical gaps in policy-relevant knowledge.”

The Fellowship aims to increase policy-relevant knowledge about genocide, mass atrocities, and their prevention by providing direct support to early-career scholars.

Requirements and Compensation

Fellowships will support new or ongoing, original research projects on three main topics:

• Current trends in genocide and mass atrocities, such as the scale, perpetrators, targets, or tactics associated with these forms of group-targeted, identity-based violence;

• Local and international action to prevent genocide and mass atrocities and protect civilians, including early warning; and

• The intersection between these topics and “cross-cutting” themes, such as new technologies, transnational social movements, and climate change.

Fellows will be required to participate in at least two workshops, at least one of which will be in-person in Washington, DC. During the in-person workshop, fellows will present their research in progress and receive feedback from an interdisciplinary advisory group of senior scholars, as well as Center staff, other fellows, and seminar participants. At the conclusion of the fellowship, fellows may be invited to publish research produced during the fellowship through the Center’s working paper series.

The Museum will provide fellows a financial award ($20,000 for those currently pursuing a PhD or equivalent research degree, $30,000 for those who have received a PhD or equivalent research degree within the last five years) and cover travel-related expenses for fellows’ participation in a workshop in Washington, DC. The fellowship is non-residential.

Application Guidelines

Applications must be received no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on December 14, 2025. We expect to review the applications and notify all applicants of the outcome in March 2026.

Applications must be submitted in English via our online application and consist of the following:

• An online application form

• A project proposal (in PDF format, not to exceed 1,300 words)

• A curriculum vitae summary (in PDF format, not to exceed four single-spaced pages)

• Contact information for two professional references, including a member of your dissertation committee or other close academic advisor

Project proposals should include the following information:

• The research question or topic that the project examines;

• How the project addresses gaps in policy-relevant knowledge about genocide, mass atrocities, and their prevention;

• The data sources and analytic methods that the project employs;

• How the applicant will use the fellowship to advance their research, including a timeline;

• Potential policy applications of the project

Applicants will be assessed according to five main criteria: (1) intellectual merit of the proposed project; (2) applicant’s ability to conduct the proposed research and complete the project; (3) potential to help fill major gaps in policy-relevant knowledge on atrocity prevention; (4) expected impact of the fellowship on the applicant’s long-term research agenda; and (5) relevance to international policy and practice of atrocity prevention.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to review a summary of the Center’s survey of obstacles to inference and synthesis in atrocity prevention research. Other things equal, we will favor applications that respond directly to the identified challenges (i.e., projects that focus on a relatively neglected topic, employ methods to address threats to causal inference, and make choices that facilitate synthesis of new findings with extant research).

At the time of their application, applicants must be enrolled in a PhD program (pre-docs) or within five years of receiving a PhD (post-PhD) from an accredited university. We welcome proposals from any relevant academic discipline as well as inter-/trans-disciplinary approaches, and encourage submissions from applicants who are based in any location, including those who are based outside of the United States and Europe.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Applications from all qualified individuals will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or any other protected status.