Information Controls Fellowship Program 2025 (Funding available) Deadline: 28 February, 2025

Applications are open for the Information Controls Fellowship Program 2025. The Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) cultivates research, outputs, and creative collaboration on topics related to repressive internet censorship and surveillance.

The ICFP supports researchers examining how governments in countries, regions, or areas of Open Technology Fund (OTF) core focus are restricting the free flow of information, cutting access to the open internet, and implementing censorship mechanisms, thereby threatening the ability of global citizens to exercise basic human rights and democracy; work focused on mitigation of such threats is also supported.

Areas of Focus

• Development and refinement of tools and techniques to continuously monitor internet interference on a global scale.
• Investigation of information controls, security, and privacy in popular applications such as search engines, social media platforms, and instant messaging applications.
• Leveraging open data to analyze the types of information controls being carried out and what they are targeting.
• Testing creative methods and new protocols for censorship circumvention and analyzing network interference measures, including all forms of internet filtering.
• Examination of the impact of internet censorship and use of circumvention tools.
• Experimental techniques to limit pro-government manipulation of online discussions.
• Researching emerging, state-sponsored surveillance patterns and analysis of targeted digital threats against civil society organizations and/or human rights defenders, such as denial of service attacks, social engineering, and phishing attacks such as malware.
• Studying the roles of machine learning and artificial intelligence in digital surveillance practices in repressive environments.
• Investigating how the traits of quantum computing implicate the realm of Internet freedom and exploring opportunities to employ this leap in computing power to evade censorship.
• Other novel ideas and approaches relating to the study of global and regional information controls.

Benefits

• Monthly stipend of $7,000 USD
• Travel stipend of $1,250 to $5,000 USD, depending on the fellowship length
• Equipment stipend of $1,250 to $5,000 USD, depending on the fellowship length

Eligibility

• Open to experienced researchers from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines and can include students and junior to mid-career practitioners with demonstrated ability and expertise.
• Typically, ICFP fellows have experience in fields such as computer science, engineering, information security research, software development, social sciences, law, and data visualization, among others.

Deadline: 28 February, 2025

Application

It is a two-stage process:

• Stage 1: Submit a concept note via OTF’s online application system.
• Stage 2: Highly competitive concept notes will be invited to submit a full proposal together with the proposed host organization via the online application system.

For more information, visit Information Controls Fellowship.