SNF Agora Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University

Position description

The SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University seeks applications for Visiting Fellows for the  academic year. By enabling the Institute to integrate a broader range of people into our work, the SNF Agora Visiting Fellows program supports the institute's overall mission of strengthening global democracy through powerful civic engagement and informed, inclusive dialogue. The program recruits a cohort of fellows from diverse sectors, disciplines, backgrounds, and ideologies to join the institute for a year to work with our permanent faculty, researchers, and students.

We welcome applicants from civil society, government, industry, media, academia, the arts, and other fields.

We ask fellowship candidates to propose specific fellowship projects they want to pursue. These projects may be undertaken at any time within the fellowship year (July 1, 2026 – June 30, 2027). While this is a non‑residential fellowship, to support a vibrant and collaborative community, SNF Agora Visiting Fellows are expected to come to JHU’s campus in Baltimore to meet the terms of their project.

Visiting Fellows also participate—in person to the extent possible—in regular workshops, seminars, and other programs at the institute, in the larger Johns Hopkins community, and beyond.

Each year, we recruit fellows through a general call for proposals, and a specific focus area. For the 2026‑27 cycle, we invite proposals in this focus area:
Democracy and the Media. Learn more about this focus area below.

The role of the media in global democracy is evolving, and boundaries are becoming more blurred with increasing overlap between journalism, influencers, and other forms of informal media. The institute seeks fellows interested in how these evolving media forms relate to and shape democracy, including: how they may promote or dissuade free speech, as well as burgeoning structural and financial pressures on journalistic norms and reporting standards.

Potential fellows may be practitioners from old and new media, the public and non‑profit sectors, artists, and researchers.

The institute welcomes applications from practitioners whose work would benefit from collaboration with our faculty—advancing their scholarly projects and our mission. In your fellowship proposal, please indicate which faculty member(s) you would like to work with and elaborate on the project.

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