New Futures Fellowship

The New Futures Fellowship program recruits globally for virtual teams to work together full-time for three months, with professional supervision and training. New Futures Fellowships are awarded to recent or current graduate students who are passionate about climate justice and want to strengthen their personal activism and professional development. Themes in 2024 are Climate + River Delta Communities, Clean Energy + Environmental Justice, and Climate + Marine Communities.

Fellows work in groups assembled from different fields of study including natural, physical, life, and earth sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, communications, journalism, marketing, and public relations. Some fellows come with activist campaigning experience and creative skills and others learn them through the fellowship.

Fellows receive professional development and training in effective public communication about complex topics and advocacy tools to advance policies or project solutions. They get hands-on coaching in creative skills such as story-telling, digital media, graphic design and video production. Guest speakers bring perspectives ranging from Microsoft to The Financial Times to the United Nations to environmental justice leaders in India and South Africa.

Each team produces an academic-style position paper proposing a solution, and an advocacy plan with concrete policy recommendations and multimedia products such as explainer videos, social posts, and public service announcements to publicize their findings. Planet Reimagined publishes the position papers and boosts each team’s creative content through Planet Reimagined’s communications networks and digital channels. We work with our media and entertainment partners to make fellowship research and advocacy solutions and campaigns highly visible to the public, reach key audiences who can influence policy and practice, and turn research into action.

Previous fellowship themes included the interactions of climate justice with health, oceans, waste, urban farming, the music industry, and Web3.