Eligibility

The Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship is international and multidisciplinary in scope. Emerging practitioners and scholars from the design and planning disciplines, and other fields in the arts, humanities and sciences are eligible to apply.

Please note that the Institute’s partnered fellowship in Architecture and the Social Sciences has additional eligibility requirements, and candidates are advised to read them carefully should they wish to apply for this award.

All prospective candidates for the fellowship program must meet the following criteria:

	Candidates may be early to mid-career scholars or practitioners in the design and planning disciplines, arts, humanities or sciences. Design professionals, artists and other practitioners must hold at least a Bachelors’ degree and demonstrate a high level of experience and achievements. Academic scholars should hold a terminal degree as defined by their field of specialty.
	The Institute welcomes applications from candidates of any nationality or country of residence. Those who are not U.S. citizens are responsible for obtaining all visas, work permits, and/or other forms of documentation that are legally required by the U.S. and their country of residence for the duration of their stay.
	Candidates must be able to spend three months of continuous residence in New York City.
	All candidates must propose, as central to their fellowship application, a publicly accessible project or series of projects to be presented before the completion of the fellowship term.
	Candidates must be able to complete their proposed projects within the fellowship term. It is understood that candidates may be at various stages of development of their projects at the beginning of the fellowship term.
	Candidates must possess English proficiency.
	Joint applications are welcome, provided all parties meet eligibility requirements, all submitted materials sufficiently demonstrate the collaborative nature of the work, and all application materials are submitted in one package. If granted, joint applicants share one fellowship award.
	Students are not eligible.
	Work for the completion of a degree is not eligible.

In addition to the above, candidates for the Institute's partnered fellowship, The New York Prize Fellowship in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences, must also meet the following criteria:

	Candidates must hold a PhD or equivalent level of qualification and experience in one of the Social Sciences or a closely related field, and have a demonstrated record of research or projects that employ social science theories and methodologies. If applying jointly, one of the primary candidates must demonstrate such training.
	All candidates must propose, as central to their fellowship application, a New York-based project that resonates specifically with the topic of sustainable cities as per the guidelines established by the Institute and the SSRC.
	Joint applications that propose cross-disciplinary collaborations between social scientists and scholars or practitioners in architecture, design, planning and related fields are especially encouraged.