Announcing the Effective Thesis Fellowships

By Christine Tan @ 2025-06-02T14:32 (+15)

At Effective Thesis, we aim to support students in utilising their theses as a pathway to impact.

We are really excited to announce the launch of our 2025 fellowship programs designed to support students in developing impactful theses that address the world's most pressing challenges. We currently offer two fellowship tracks - a Generalist (4 weeks) and a Specialist Fellowship (3 months).

Specialist Fellowship (3 months)

Ideal for students who are looking to start developing their high-impact thesis.

Skip the typical thesis and work directly with high-impact mentors and organizations tackling the world's biggest challenges for your thesis.

How It Works: Apply to a specific pre-vetted research project that matches your interests, then develop it into your final-year thesis over 3 months. You'll collaborate directly with expert mentors while receiving ongoing support from the Effective Thesis team.

• Upcoming Cohort: 🗓️ Flexible Start Dates | 📍 Online (virtual)
• Application Deadline: Rolling Applications

Specialist Fellowship Projects Open for Application

 We are currently offering several fellowship projects addressing critical global challenges:

• AI Safety & Governance: Work on nuclear-AI risk coordination, geopolitical AI governance, or computer governance with mentors from MIRI, Institute for Progress, and Uppsala University.
• Global Health & Development: Work with Charity-Entrepreneurship incubatees to inform their high-impact interventions on reducing intimate partner violence in East Africa (NOVAH), and cognitive behavioral therapy interventions for violence prevention in Colombia (ACTRA).
• Research Evaluation: Conduct independent evaluations of high-impact research with The Unjournal.

Ready to make your thesis count? Browse our fellowship projects here and apply directly here. Each project has flexible/different start dates.

Generalist Fellowships (4 weeks)

Ideal for students who are deciding between different thesis topics and career paths.

Are you a student currently deciding between different impactful thesis topics or career paths? Through this fellowship, you’ll learn to prioritise between different thesis topics, build a Theory of Change for your thesis ideas, and reverse engineer your long-term career goals into actionable next steps you can take during your thesis journey.

Next cohort: September-October 2025 (~7-10h per week commitment)

Application: Rolling Applications; You can apply through our joint general application form below.

Joint General Application Form (<5 min) 

You can apply for all our services through our general joint application form (takes <5 minutes). Apart from our fellowships, we also offer 1:1 mentorship.

Interested in becoming a mentor for high-impact research?

We are always looking for incredible mentors to support students! If you have a thesis idea that you think could be highly impactful at the margin, we would love to hear from you here. We would also love to invite you to join our expert network to support our incredible students!

Thank you so much for your time - feel free to reach us at admin@effectivethesis.org if you have any questions or feedback!