STIAS Iso Lomso Fellowship 2025 for African Scholars (Funding available)

Deadline: February 15, 2025

Applications for the STIAS Iso Lomso Fellowship 2025 are now open. Iso Lomso means ‘the eye of tomorrow’ in isiXhosa: seeing towards the future, laying the foundations for tomorrow. The programme is aimed at African scholars who have obtained a doctoral degree within the preceding seven years and who hold an academic position at a university or research institution anywhere in Africa.

Iso Lomso fellowships provide a three-year attachment to Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) to enable fellows to develop and conduct a long-term research programme of their preference. The aim is to facilitate and support them towards becoming established scholars in their fields. The main means of support is STIAS residencies. Residential periods will be agreed mutually between the fellow, his or her home institution and STIAS, and may vary between six weeks and five months per residency. A first period of residency will typically be of longer duration to be taken up during 2026, followed by two further residencies through 2028.

Benefits

While in residence fellows receive regular STIAS fellow support which includes:

• an economy return flight;
• comfortable accommodation within walking distance from the institute;
• individual offices equipped with a PC, telephone and printer;
• a monthly stipend for daily living costs;
• access to the Stellenbosch University library (including electronic resources) and a high-speed internet connection;
• participation in the regular STIAS fellows programme, including daily lunch, weekly fellows’ seminars, STIAS public lectures and social events;
• a child care subsidy for fellows accompanied by young children while in residence.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the 2025 call, applicants must:

• be a national of any African country;
• be born after the 1st of January 1983;
• have an affiliation at a research or higher education institution in an African country, and continue to do so for the foreseeable future;
• have obtained a doctoral degree from any recognised higher education institution (worldwide) after the 1st of January 2017;
• have completed a post-doctoral fellowship or equivalent post-PhD research programme;
• be in a position to commence a first period of residency at STIAS during 2026.

Selection Criteria

Applications will be evaluated and selected on the basis of the following criteria:

• Level: the applicant’s academic excellence and the originality and scholarly strength of the proposed research project;
• Innovation: the project’s promise of new insights and the potential to produce new knowledge;
• Interdisciplinarity: whether the project methodology allows for drawing from different disciplines and its potential to facilitate an interdisciplinary discourse;
• Relevance: the project’s relevance for scholarship and knowledge production in Africa;
• Feasibility: whether the research design and the research plan are convincing and realistic.

During final selection, additional consideration will be given to:

• gender representation;
• diversity of nationalities;
• diversity of disciplines;
• participation in previous or current research projects;
• previous international experience.

Application

The following documents, all in PDF format, must accompany your application:

•  A motivational cover letter of not more than one page in length. The letter should include a description of the applicant’s academic career, detailing the ideas and experiences that have shaped and motivated his or her intellectual work.
• A pre-proposal for a three-year research project. This is a short essay of two to three pages which provides (i) a summary of the applicant’s current research/work, (ii) the main thesis of the proposed research project, including the problem statement and aim of the project, (iii) an overview of existing literature and other sources for the project, (iv) the project’s theoretical background and methodological approach, (v) the significance/relevance of the project for African scholarship, and (vi) a provisional time framework with proposed periods of residency at STIAS, additional activities, and research outputs.
• One or two recent writing examples authored by the applicant (articles or book sections) related to the proposed project.
• A copy of the applicant’s doctoral certificate.
• An up-to-date Curriculum Vitae
• A letter of support from your home institution (either from the head of department, dean of faculty, principal of college, or equivalent) which contains a confirmation of the applicant’s academic position and an assurance from the institution that the applicant will be released for residential research periods. 
  Institutions are reminded that STIAS provides teaching replacement funding during periods of residency, and that research residencies aim not only to develop candidates’ own research profiles, but also to develop a cohort of academic leaders to the benefit of scholarship in the continent.
• Two letters of recommendation from scholars who are familiar with the applicant’s work, preferably one from the applicant’s current home institution and one from another institution. The letter should be printed on an official institutional letterhead and should include the name of the recommender, the academic position of the recommender, an indication of how long and in what capacity the recommender has known the applicant, and an evaluation of the merit of the applicant’s proposed project and ability to complete the proposed work during three years. The letters of recommendation will be confidential and should be sent by the recommender directly to [email protected].

Download the application form and email to [email protected].

For more information, visit Iso Lomso Fellowship.