Human Rights & Technology Fellowships

Please note: CIS has temporarily paused the fellowship program.

The Human Rights and Technology Fellowship Program explores how technology impacts human rights reporting, and how rights are challenged by technological advances. It supports student research and public discourse on these topics and invites proposals from MIT undergraduate and graduate students.

The program will support students’ research, participation in a working group, and other activities.

It is intended to produce new knowledge about the relationship between human rights and technology—i.e.,how technology can enhance human rights work, and how the use of technology can impede human rights.

For example, satellite monitoring, crowd sourcing, forensic anthropology, cell phone networks, new media and the like can be creatively employed to address human rights abuses. Conversely, the control and surveillance afforded by new, electronic techniques can impinge on individual freedom and lead to large scale violations of human rights.

Research should provide new insights into one of these phenomena, underscoring the interplay of technologies and human rights norms and practice.

Human Rights & Technology Fellows will receive $2,000 to pursue their research proposal. The research may be done any time from when the award is made until August 31 of the fellowship award.

2018-2019 Fellows

2019-2020 Fellows

2020-2021 Fellows

2021-2022 Fellows

Fellowship Guidelines