Call for Graduate Discovery Fellows
for the Discovery Research Hub at the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry
Berkeley Discovery fosters equitable access to the core of the university’s mission: research toward the creation and stewardship of knowledge. It offers innovative experiences in and beyond the classroom that support students in their transformations from learner to practitioner, from reader to critic, and from consumer to producer of knowledge.
The Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) fosters cross-divisional, cross-regional and global collaborations in order to address the key political, social, religious and cultural issues of our time. We are committed to thinking creatively across an array of fields to develop a capacious vision of the arts and the human and social sciences, in relation to critical thought, justice, and ethics.
The Discovery Research Hubs are sites for an expanded relationship between graduate student researchers and undergraduate mentees. By empowering graduate students to lead and manage their own research clusters, these hubs support Berkeley’s innovative research agendas across fields by further entwining the individual learning experiences of undergraduate students with the larger academic pursuits of the university’s community. The Discovery Research Hub at CICI fosters collaborations in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and will support up to 10 research clusters in the 2025-26 academic year.
How does it work?
CICI Discovery Fellows will assemble small working groups of undergraduate student researchers around a theme related to their research, e.g. the origins of photography and developments in 19th-century fiction. These undergraduate students will come with, and may even be recruited for, their own interests in some part of the Discovery Fellow’s doctoral research. In the above example, one student might be interested in the history of photography as art, while another might be intrigued by the science that led to the development of photography, and yet another on the relationship between photography and print journalism.
The Discovery Research Hub supports the development of graduate students' dissertations while developing their leadership and mentorship skills. The Discovery Fellows and undergraduate student researchers gather about five times each semester to learn skills for creating productive mentoring relationships, applying for grants and fellowships, developing coherent pitches and presentations, and exploring archival resources both on and off campus. This workshop series, facilitated by the Discovery Initiative, fosters community among the graduate and undergraduate students which in turn has the potential to lead to further collaboration among them, their home departments, and CICI.
Graduate Discovery Fellows will:
-
Assemble small groups of 2-3 undergraduate student researchers, who work on portions of their doctoral research. These will be your cluster for the full 2025-26 academic year.
-
Lead their cluster of undergraduates through a semester of intensive study, gaining experience in seminar development while acquiring experience as a mentor.
-
Eat lunch with one another, the Discovery team, and select speakers at monthly meetings of a workshop series where they’ll hear talks and develop professional skills.
-
Moderate a research symposium based around the work of their cluster. At this event, they will have a chance to showcase the work of each cluster.
-
Be supported in their work through a stipend of $2,000 - $3,000 per semester (depending on the number of mentees) in addition to $500 in research funds for the purchase of books, media licenses, or other sundries associated with their research cluster.
Program Structure
As a general outline, the program begins after acceptance with a Zoom meeting sometime early in August to workshop position postings and prepare you to recruit students. We will then meet, as outlined above, several times across the semester for professionalization and leadership workshops. There will be 1-on-1 meetings with the program facilitator across the semester to check in on your groups and your work as well, and finally the symposium at the end of the year where we will celebrate the work you and your students have done across the semesters with a mini conference.
Financial Support
Each Discovery Fellow receives a stipend of $1,000 per mentee each semester and is required to work with a minimum of two students. As a part of the program, there is also an opportunity to use a small amount of research funds, no more than $500 per cluster, to acquire any materials needed to facilitate our work.
How to Apply:
To apply to become a Discovery Fellow at CICI, please complete the application form here. The application includes the following:
-
A current abstract for your dissertation project, with a few subfields identified for undergraduates to pursue [NB: Place these near the top.]
-
A project statement that outlines the specific work you will be targeting for completion or advancement with your cluster. (Maybe you have a chapter that needs conceptualizing and completing? Or a conference paper or article to finalize. Try to think about how the students can support you while also advancing their own interests!)
-
A several paragraph sketch of learning outcomes and an academic year timeline, (broken down by semester), for your research cluster. This could include a list of books and topics for your meetings, further ideas and detailed description of byways undergraduates might find in your work, etc.
-
A budget for any research expenses. These could be conference fees or museum entries, books you need in specific editions, or licensing to screen certain media.
