Oak International Human Rights Fellowship: The Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights was established in 1998 by a generous grant from the Oak Foundation.
Each year, it hosts an Oak Human Rights Fellow to teach and conduct research while residing at the College.
The Institute organizes lectures and other events centered around the fellow’s area of expertise.
The purpose of the fellowship is to offer an opportunity for one prominent practitioner in international human rights to take a sabbatical leave from front-line work to spend the fall semester (September-December) in residence at Colby.
This provides the Fellow time for respite, reflection, research, and writing.
While all human rights practitioners are eligible, we especially encourage applications from those who are currently or were recently involved in “on-the-ground” work at some level of personal risk.
Following the period of the fellowship, the fellow is expected to return home to continue her/his human rights work.
The Oak Institute seeks one frontline human rights practitioner outside of the United States for residence at Colby.
Possible areas of human rights work on behalf of those incarcerated may include, but are not limited to:
- living standards and health care in prisons, pretrial detention
- illegal imprisonment
- detained non-citizens
- the right of legal representation
- juvenile detention
- education and practical training for inmates
- post-detention rehabilitation
- families of inmates
- disciplinary procedures
- prison privatization
- gender and racial discrimination in incarceration
- political prisoners, prisoners of war, torture, sexual abuse, brutality, and the death penalty.
Application Deadline: 15th December.
For more information and application, visit: Oak International Human Rights Fellowship Website
