LUCAS-LAHRI Virtual Visiting Fellowships

The Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS), in collaboration with the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute (LAHRI), is hosting a fourth cohort of LUCAS-LAHRI Virtual Visiting Fellows in 2024. Find out more about our current group of Fellows on our People page.

The 2024 application window has now closed. 

The Virtual Visiting Research Fellowships are short-term fellowships for academics based at institutions on the African continent, who through these positions will be given an opportunity to undertake a well-defined piece of research with a view to establishing research partnerships with academics at the University of Leeds. Each Visiting Fellowship comes with an award of £1,000, to be used by the applicant to pursue their planned research.

We invite proposals that focus on the theme of "African Ecologies", and that are driven by an intellectual and political commitment to ecological and epistemic justice. We welcome applications from across the diversity of African academic institutions.

Efforts to better understand and mitigate ecological change are disproportionately rooted in theoretical frameworks which originated in the global north. This is despite the fact that such changes demand the formation of durable, long-term collaborations that are multi-disciplinary and global in nature. While the sciences can help us to understand the dramatic changes that are underway to our climate, it is only through the arts, humanities and qualitative social sciences that we can hope to understand and address these through the crucial lenses of justice, equity and restitution that come with the damage and change to our environment. Present and future ecological changes will not impact all of us equally. Extreme weather, rising sea levels, drought, food insecurity and myriad other problems will disproportionately affect traditionally underserved and marginalised communities.

All our Visiting Fellows work towards tangible outputs, in the form of a publication (jointly authored with, or otherwise with active input from, a University of Leeds academic) AND/OR a grant application (jointly prepared with a University of Leeds academic and supported by LAHRI).

During their Visiting Fellowship, the researcher will have access to online library resources and will be invited to deliver an online presentation based on the topic of their research.