Polyfoni Social Sciences for AI Fellowship 2026-2027 – YOA

Deadline: October 15, 2026

Applications are open for the Polyfoni Social Sciences for AI Fellowship 2026-2027. The Polyfoni Fellowship is a 4-month part-time analysis collaboration for social scientists with fieldwork expertise in areas the place AI merchandise are being deployed. Fellows be a part of remotely from November 2026 to March 2027 and conduct a cultural audit of an actual AI product of their area of experience.

Fellowship Details

Fellows conduct a cultural audit: an empirical evaluation of how a particular AI product encodes assumptions in regards to the context it’s deployed in, and the place these assumptions break. Each audit follows Polyfoni’s Cultural Audit Method: assumption mapping, contextual failure identification, severity evaluation, and proposals.

Polyfoni supervisors suggest audit themes aligned with the analysis priorities. Fellows select and form their undertaking in shut collaboration with their tutorial and trade mentors. The output is a report written for a product workforce, printed on Polyfoni’s Substack beneath the guy’s identify.

The audit goal needs to be an actual AI product in a area the guy has real contextual data about. Your fieldwork expertise is the info. You should not ranging from scratch. You are making use of what you already know by means of a structured methodology.

Examples of audit targets:

• A well being AI chatbot in East Africa
• A ocean AI device in Southeast Asia
• An agricultural AI device in West Africa
• An LLM deployed in a non-English-dominant market

Benefits

• Dual mentorship from an instructional collaborator and an AI trade skilled
• Training in Polyfoni’s Cultural Audit Method
• Online masterclasses and month-to-month group periods, supported by our companion AI Mission Lab
• A printed analysis on Polyfoni’s web site and Making AI Listen (open entry publication) beneath your identify

Eligibility

• You can apply if you’re enthusiastic about utilizing your social science coaching to contribute to how AI merchandise are constructed, evaluated, and ruled.
• They are enthusiastic about candidates from a broad set of disciplinary backgrounds, together with anthropology, sociology, STS, improvement research, political science, humanities, and space research. There are not any strict diploma necessities, though we count on that essentially the most promising candidates can have fieldwork expertise in a Global South context and an curiosity in know-how careers. Prior AI expertise is just not required.
• When assessing functions, we will likely be trying for:
  • Regional experience with proof of fieldwork: Deep contextual data of a spot, neighborhood, or sector the place AI is being deployed. Priority areas: East Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, China.
  • Clear motivation: A particular purpose for eager to work on the intersection of social science and AI, and a concrete thought of which AI product you’d audit. They count on the fellows to work on the audit 5 hours per week.
  • Language: Comfortable working in English. Additional languages are a bonus.
• They choose for variety of area and self-discipline.

Application

Application is now open. The choice course of has two steps:

• Step 1: Initial application. Submit a brief application with motivation (500 phrases most). Successful candidates will likely be contacted for a CV assessment.
• Step 2: Interview. Final candidates can have an interview and a analysis dialogue with the Polyfoni workforce.

Polyfoni matches fellows with mentors primarily based on regional experience alignment (your fieldwork area and the mentor’s firm market) and sector alignment (well being, fintech, content material moderation, and so on.).

Click here to apply

For extra info, go to Polyfoni Social Sciences for AI Fellowship.