Perry World House Graduate Fellows

The Perry World House Graduate Fellows Program is designed for graduate students across the entire Penn community who are eager to learn about global policy engagement. The program provides instruction on the skills that global policy practitioners rely on every day, from diplomatic strategy and media engagement, to negotiating skills and open-source intelligence (OSINT) data analysis.

deal candidates for the Graduate Fellows program are those emerging leaders at Penn who want to connect their research to global policymaking and effectively communicate the policy implications of their work to broader audiences. This initiative provides students opportunities to practice presenting their work to wider audiences and to interact meaningfully with policy practitioners, while also learning how to bring skills needed for effective foreign policy development into their research, no matter their core field of study.

The Perry World House Graduate Fellows also have a front-row seat to engage directly with Penn’s annual cohort of distinguished visiting fellows, leading university faculty, as well as a bespoke set of academic, policy, and diplomatic leaders from Washington and around the world who are invited to speak with Fellows at program sessions.

The core objectives of the program are:

• To encourage graduate students to undertake interdisciplinary research that addresses global policy challenges.
• To facilitate sustained, meaningful dialogue between scholars and policymakers.
• To strengthen students’ abilities to clearly and effectively communicate their research to policy audiences, and learn key skills from the multidisciplinary field of foreign policy that they can integrate into their ongoing research at Penn.
• To build a long-term community among graduate students, Perry World House faculty, and global policy experts and leaders.

The program will consist of the following components:

1. Policy Seminar Sessions: The seminar sessions will meet every two or three weeks and will have three core components:
   1. Skills development: These sessions will focus on topics such as effective policy memo writing, structured briefing, strategic communications, media engagement, OSINT data analysis, and stakeholder management. These sessions will be concentrated in the fall semester.
   2. Invited Speakers: Throughout the year, Graduate Fellows will have the opportunity to meet directly with leading current and former diplomats, officials, experts, and leaders in foreign policy, both from Washington and abroad. 
   3. Research presentations: Students will talk about their research ideas and practice presenting their work to a more general audience. Modeled on a dissertation seminar, this will be faculty-led and have opportunities for students to receive both substantive and stylistic feedback on their work. Top-level visitors to Perry World House will also be encouraged to attend to give further feedback from a policy perspective. These sessions will be concentrated in the spring semester.
2. Written Policy Output: During the program, Fellows will be split into groups of 2-3 and will have the opportunity to work on a short article on a topic of their choosing related to the fields of foreign policy and national security (and possibly their own research at Penn). These will be developed with the intent that they will be submitted for possible publication on the Perry World House website and/or external publication opportunities.
3. Policy Simulation and Interactive Learning: Opportunities to participate in interactive policy games, simulated diplomatic and/or U.S. National Security Council meetings, and mock negotiations will also be provided.
4. Day Trip to Washington, D.C.: A highlight of the program is the annual sojourn of the Graduate Fellows cohort to Washington, D.C. for a day of engagement with active practitioners of international affairs.  Previous years visits have included stops at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.S. Department of State, internationally focused think tanks, and other key organizations. Graduate Fellows will also have the opportunity to visit Penn Washington’s main offices and participate in an interactive panel on careers in foreign policy.
5. Policy Engagement with Visiting Fellows: Graduate fellows will get special access to the distinguished visiting fellows and policy leaders who visit PWH throughout the year.

Selection

We will conduct a competitive selection process open to Ph.D. and master’s level students engaged or interested in engaging in global policy-relevant research in any academic discipline but with a preference for research relevant to the PWH thematic areas of climate, democracy, human rights, and security. Students from non-policy disciplines should demonstrate their work’s applicability to these research themes, and how they intend to apply their research to it. Both policy-curious students and students who find Perry World House as their natural intellectual home on campus are encouraged to apply. Selection will be based on depth and global policy relevance of research, intellectual rigor, and potential impact on policy discussions.

Application Instructions

If this seems like the right program for you, please upload the following materials no later than Friday, April 10, 2026 to https://apply.interfolio.com/183502.

• Your current CV / Resume
• A statement of interest of no more than500 words explaining what you hope to gain from your participation in this program  
• A statement of no more than 500 words that describes how your research is or potentially is relevant to global policy.
• Sample research paper, published or unpublished OR research poster that has or will be presented at a conference in PDF format

Please note that incomplete applications will not be considered.   Include your last name in all uploaded documents (e.g., “Smith_CV.pdf”).