About the Fellowship
Applications for the fellowship are now closed.
The way the internet is structured shapes the way communities gather, organize, and share resources, both on and offline. In other words, internet infrastructure structures how communities make decisions and self-govern. But who is part of the process in designing this infrastructure, and who is left out? How could online governance be different with more inclusive design processes?
The Groundwork Fellowship is a three month online fellowship hosted by Metagov meant to bring community-based researchers into this design process. We are aiming to convene a cohort or 4-6 fellows actively working and experimenting within communities currently under-represented in these technical conversations. In particular, we are interested in working with fellows who can give voice to communities experiencing either online or offline marginalization due to internet infrastructure injustices or inequalities. To illustrate what we have in mind, some examples include, but are not limited to:
- communication being disrupted through denial of infrastructure services (e.g. communities experiencing government imposed internet restrictions)
- decision making practices that are under-supported by existing online tools (e.g. communities being compelled to reproduce cultural memory typically transferred through oral traditions into technical formats that are legible to current archival tools)
- forced displacement (e.g. communities with experience interacting or integrating with “community networks” in sites of displacement, like refugee camps)
- economic challenges maintaining and governing infrastructure due to environmental conditions (e.g. communities using alternative network infrastructure such as solar powered internet in response to power grid failures)
- non-consensual infrastructural dominance over cultural output through data scraping and algorithmic injustice (e.g. artist communities or open-source communities being exploited by large ML models)
Fellows will explore and share lessons with each other and Metagov researchers. The ultimate aim of the fellowship is to strengthen the foundations and networks necessary for a new paradigm in the design of online spaces. Towards this aim, each fellow will produce and present a technical artifact (physical or virtual) that speaks to the way that the lived experiences of their communities are shaped by, respond to, and approach the design of internet infrastructure.
Example artifacts may include, but are not limited to:
- Software applications
- Games
- Data trusts
- Technical plans, specs, or recommendations
- DAOs and other cryptographic infrastructures
- Algorithms
- Low/no-code tooling
- Frameworks for organizational sense-making, coordination, decision-making, communication, and strategy
- Note: Artifact should include an English translation if the primary artifact is made in another language
- Note: Artifact should include an English translation if the primary artifact is made in another language
Apply
Applications for the fellowship are now closed.
Prospective applications from anywhere in the world are welcome to apply using this application form. Applicants will submit a brief description of the artifact they have in mind to make, and a brief description of the community(ies) they work within.
Applicants should:
- Have a strong interest in experimenting with emerging technology and community decision making
- Have some documentation or samples of past or ongoing experiments in this area
- Already be established within a community for at least a year, rather than proposing a prospective collaboration with a new community
Prospective applicants from a range of experiences are encouraged to apply, with backgrounds including but not limited to:
- Historians of community technology
- Community/mesh networking
- AR/VR walks
- Internet infrastructure documentation
- Ethnographers
- Social media moderators
- Art and music collectives
- DAOs and other cryptographic infrastructure
- Social justice movements
- Cooperatives (platform coops, shared ownership)
The invited cohort will be selected to prioritize:
- Applicants from communities under-represented in discussions on the past, present, and future of online governance, such as those from adversely affected and under-resourced regions
- Interdisciplinarity and diversity of backgrounds and experience
Support
- $2,000 fellowship fee (paid in two parts):
- $1,000 at beginning
- $1,000 upon completion of artifact
- metagov.org emails that can be used for affiliation and external communications for 1 year
- Participation in Metagov’s primary community communication forum (Slack)
- Optional: Casual peer-support and co-working meetings (Gather.town)
- Optional: Presentation of work-in-progress at Metagov’s Govbase Labs, a series of working groups with leading experts in qualitative and quantitative data-driven governance research (Zoom)
- Optional: Opportunities to have data from respective communities integrated into the current Govbase database
Expectations
- Attend a 1.5-hour kick off meeting (Zoom)
- Attend a 1.5-hour long mid-fellowship check-in (Zoom)
- Attend at least two 1-hour long online seminar lectures by Metagov researchers on the topic of online infrastructure governance (Zoom)
- Attend two 1.5-hour long reading groups based on two texts, to be determined by fellows (Zoom)
- Presentation of artifacts as part of a Metagov Seminar “Short Talk” event (Zoom)
- Ten minute presentation followed by fifteen minutes of moderated discussion
- Seminars are recorded and uploaded to the Internet Archive
Timeline
- February 2: Release of call
- February 23 (6-7pm ET): Q&A with Metagov Community Manager and Fellowship Coordinator, Cent Hosten.
- Register closed
- March 10, 11:59pm anywhere in the world: Submission due via the application form
- March 27: Fellows notified
- April 17: Fellows announced
- May 1: Start of fellowship and kickoff meeting
- Mid June: Mid-fellowship check-in (Zoom)
- July 5: Seminar #1 – Artifacts presentation (Two fellows)
- July 12: Seminar #2 – Artifacts presentation (Two fellows)
- July 19: Seminar #3 – Artifacts presentation (Two fellows)
- July 28: End of fellowship
The Groundwork Fellowship is a project of The Metagovernance Project, with grant support from the Henry Luce Foundation.
The Groundwork Fellowship is inspired by: the Sacred Stacks Fellowship, the Excavations Art Fellowship, the Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab Fellowship, and the Internet Archive’s DWeb Fellows.
Please direct any inquiries to Metagov (attn: Cent Hosten) at hello@metagov.org
Who we are
The Metagovernance Project is a non-profit research collective with some of the top researchers working in internet governance today, including some of the key people behind Creative Commons, platform cooperativism, and blockchain law. Together, we build standards and infrastructure for digital self-governance. Learn more about our people and our work at www.metagov.org.