CALL FOR FELLOWSHIP APPLICATIONS – AT THE REGIONAL NETWORK OF CENTERS FOR ADVANCED STUDIES IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE (RECAS)

The Regional Fellowship encourages researchers to conduct and present their work across key university centers in Southeast Europe, deepening regional exchange and cooperation. Fellows will receive host support at the Universities of Rijeka and Belgrade, and may select co-hosts among partner universities in Skopje, Sarajevo, Ljubljana, Prishtina, Tirana, or Podgorica. This allows researchers to develop comparative perspectives, build networks, and contribute to regionally grounded, globally relevant scholarship.

Each fellow will spend up to six months working on a research project related to this year’s fellowship theme. During their stay, they will engage with local scholarly communities, conduct fieldwork, test methods, and link their findings to concrete societal challenges. The program is especially suited to action-oriented scholars aiming to co-create knowledge, address democratic deficits, or propose viable alternatives for the future of the region.

2026 FELLOWSHIP THEME: Contested Futures: Democratic, Technological and Ecological Transformations in the Western Balkans

This year’s fellowship theme invites researchers to explore how competing visions of democratic, technological and ecological futures are emerging and being contested across the Western Balkans. In a context marked by democratic backsliding, rapid technological transformation, ecological pressures, stalled and uneven European integration, and geopolitical realignment, the future of the region is not simply uncertain, but it has become an increasingly important object of political and social conflict. Competing actors advance different understandings of modernization, development, democracy and sustainability, raising fundamental questions about who has the authority to define desirable futures, whose interests transformations serve, and whose fears, losses and alternatives are excluded.

Rather than treating democracy, technological development and ecological transition as separate policy domains, the fellowship approaches them as interconnected arenas in which alternative futures are imagined, negotiated, institutionalized and challenged. Particular attention is given to moments in which future-oriented reforms, promoted in the name of modernization, innovation, Europeanization or sustainability, become sites of contestation over power, distribution, participation and justice.

The programme foregrounds three interlinked thematic pillars:

· Technological Futures: How are artificial intelligence, digital infrastructures and emerging technologies reshaping economic development, governance, security and everyday life in the Western Balkans? Who defines the region’s technological future, and through which institutions, infrastructures and investments? Fellows are invited to examine questions including AI governance, data sovereignty, digital public infrastructure, platform power, technological competitiveness, algorithmic decision-making and the geopolitical dimensions of technological transformation.

· Democratic Futures in the Age of AI: How is technological transformation changing democratic institutions, political participation and relations between citizens and public authority? What new possibilities and risks emerge as governance becomes increasingly dependent on digital infrastructures, data and algorithmic systems? Fellows are encouraged to explore democratic resilience, institutional innovation, digital governance, algorithmic accountability, civic agency, public trust, participation and new models of governing increasingly data-driven societies.

· Ecological Futures in the Age of Technological Transformation: How does technological transformation intersect with ecological transition, resource governance and competing models of development? Who benefits from the green transition, who bears its social and environmental costs, and how are these conflicts politically negotiated? Research may address just transition, energy systems, critical raw materials, climate adaptation, environmental governance, circular economy, technological solutions for sustainability and the political economy of green transformation.

Across these pillars, the fellowship challenges researchers to approach the Western Balkans not simply as a region adapting to transformations designed elsewhere, but as a space in which different futures are actively produced, negotiated and contested. European integration therefore constitutes a transversal dimension of the programme. Fellows are encouraged to examine how European policy agendas are translated into regional and local contexts, where tensions emerge between European ambitions and regional realities, and how experiences from the Western Balkans might contribute to shaping future European governance.

The fellowship programme aims to blend theoretical inquiry, empirical research and policy design. Fellows are encouraged to identify concrete sites of contestation and investigate which futures are being proposed, which actors produce and promote them, through which institutions, infrastructures and narratives they are sustained, who benefits and who is excluded, and what alternative futures remain possible. Research should connect these conflicts to broader structural transformations, including democratic backsliding and renewal, artificial intelligence and digitalization, ecological transition and resource politics, changing models of economic development, and the evolving geopolitical position of the Western Balkans.

By connecting research with regional collaboration and policy co-creation, the fellowship offers an opportunity to move from diagnosing competing visions of the future toward examining how conflicts surrounding them might be translated into more democratic, inclusive and publicly accountable forms of governance.

Research will be anchored in real-world processes, including:

· The RECAS Fellowship Programme, bringing together early-career researchers from across the Western Balkans for six months of interdisciplinary research and mentoring;

· Three Future Governance Hackathons dedicated to democratic, technological and ecological futures, where fellows, policymakers, civil society organizations and practitioners will translate research findings into governance models, institutional innovations and policy proposals;

· The Academic Policy Lab, a regional platform connecting research, policy experimentation and public debate and providing a shared knowledge infrastructure for successive fellowship cohorts;

· The Contested Futures Atlas, a comparative publication mapping promised futures, principal lines of contestation, actors, interests, exclusions and governance responses across the Western Balkans.

CONDITIONS

· Fellowship duration: 3 to 6 months

· Expected start: mid-November, 2026

· Monthly stipend: €1,500 net

· Fellows are responsible for regional travel and healthcare

· RECAS provides office space, institutional support, and local networks

Fellows are also expected to:

· Participate in the CAS Online Seminar series (weekly)

· Join 2 capacity-building workshops

· Spend one week at Moise Palace (Cres Island)

· Present at a regional conference and a policy event in the EU

EXPECTED OUTPUTS

Each fellow is expected to:

· Produce a research essay or brief

· Participate in a Policy Hackathon

· Share results at Surgery Week

· Contribute to the Academic Policy Lab repository

· Submit a final activity report

CALENDAR OF ACTIONS

Application deadline → 30 September 2026 Expected start of fellowship → mid-November 2026

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

· PhD obtained or PhD candidate (advanced stage)

· Fluent in English

· Open to all disciplines in humanities, social sciences, arts

· Priority for applicants working on Southeast Europe

HOW TO APPLY

Submit via ONLINE APPLICATION FORM Deadline: 30 September 2026

FELLOWSHIPS ENABLED BY

Open Society Foundation – Western Balkans ERSTE Foundation

 

ABOUT RECAS

RECAS connects scholars and institutions from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia. It promotes regional exchange, public scholarship, and innovation at the intersection of research and policy.