"Harvard Environmental Fellow"

Position Description

The Harvard University Center for the Environment created the Environmental Fellows program to enable recent doctorate recipients to use and expand Harvard's extraordinary resources to tackle complex environmental problems. The Environmental Fellows will work for two years with Harvard faculty members in any school or department while also strengthening connections across the University's academic disciplines.

The Award: The fellowship includes a salary of $90,000 per year, employee health insurance eligibility, up to $2,500 reimbursement for relocation expenses, and a $2,500 annual allowance for travel and other professional expenses. The Harvard University Center for the Environment expects to award approximately five fellowships for the 2026 cohort. The Center will organize a co-curricular program to ensure that the fellows get to know each other and each other's work. All fellows will attend biweekly dinners with their colleagues, faculty members, and guests.

Basic Qualifications

- Candidates for 2026 Environmental Fellowships should have received their terminal degree between May 2022 and August 2026. (Fellows must have filed their dissertation before starting their appointment in September 2026.)
- Candidates with a doctorate or equivalent in any field are eligible, and they may propose research projects in any discipline. Applicants without a Ph.D. may apply if they have studied in fields where the Ph.D. is not the typical terminal degree. All successful candidates will be able to demonstrate experience performing scholarly research.
- Candidates may have received their degrees at any university in the world. Foreign nationals are eligible for fellowships, though study at Harvard requires proficiency in English.

Additional Qualifications

- Each candidate must secure a commitment from one or more Harvard faculty members to serve as a mentor and to provide office or lab space for the two-year fellowship.
- Candidates who received terminal degrees from Harvard, and post-docs currently working at Harvard are eligible for the fellowship provided their research and host arrangements take them in new directions and forge new connections within the University. Harvard candidates should not propose to continue to work with the same professors or lab groups with whom they are currently associated. No candidate should propose to work extensively with his or her thesis advisor.
- Successful candidates should be prepared to commit to work at Harvard for the full two years of the fellowship. This fellowship requires residency in the Cambridge area and any fieldwork trip must be scheduled for the summer or January recess.

Special Instructions

1. Please complete the online application form by December 1, 2025 at 5 p.m. (ET) and attach the relevant supporting documents as PDFs:
- curriculum vitae including list of publications;
- detailed research proposal where applicants should explain their specific reasons for applying to a Harvard residential environmental fellowship (maximum of five pages, references counted separately). Note: While applicants should discuss the proposal with their potential faculty hosts, the final product should clearly be the work of the applicant; and
- up to three publications/writing samples.
2. Three letters of reference, including one from the applicant's dissertation adviser. NOTE: The ARIeS application system will only send recommendation letter requests via email after the application has been officially submitted. Please be in touch with your recommenders in advance so that they can quickly upload their letters after they receive the link. It only takes a few minutes for them to do so. Recommenders will have extra time after the deadline (December 10, 2025) to submit letters.
3. A letter of support is also required from the applicant's host committing to serve as a mentor and explaining his or her commitment to the proposed research, including the provision of office or lab space. Applicants are encouraged to ask their hosts to email letters of reference as PDFs or, if necessary, as Word documents attached to the emails. Hosts also have extra time after the deadline (December 10, 2025) to submit letters and should send them directly to the attention of Cayla Jett at the Center at environmental_fellows@harvard.edu.

You will receive an automated email once you have submitted this online form with attachments. The Center will notify applicants individually to confirm receipt of a complete application (online form, letters of reference, and letter of support).

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions or any other characteristic protected by law.