News/Research

Now Accepting Applications for 2021 Lyman Fellowship

14 Oct, 2020

Now Accepting Applications for 2021 Lyman Fellowship

The Peter Lyman Graduate Fellowship in new media, established in the memory of esteemed UC Berkeley Professor Peter Lyman, provides a stipend to a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate to support the writing of his or her Ph.D. dissertation on a topic related to new media. The fellowship is supported by donations from Professor Barrie Thorne, Sage Publications and many individual friends and faculty.

Applications for summer 2021 are now open. To apply for the Lyman Fellowship, please fill in this form by February 1, 2021.

Some preference will be given to those doing research related to children and youth, to BCNM Designated Emphasis students, and to projects that focus on women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Global South, ability diverse, and socioeconomically disadvantaged peoples as makers and users of new media. If relevant, please explain how your project foregrounds one or more of these communities. Originality and quality of research are, however, the primary criteria.

The amount of the stipend depends on the size of the fund. In 2020 the fellowship amount was $6,000.00.

You must be a UC Berkeley Ph.D. student who has passed his or her qualifying exams to apply.

Previous fellows include Anushah Hossain. Anushah asks how we came to have a multi-lingual internet and seeks to answer the question through a historical and ethnographic study of the tools and peoples that helped construct it in South Asia. Beginning in the mid-1990s, a group of Bangladeshi activists formed, whose mission it was to “bring Bangla into the digital age.” Their fervor for their language from the liberation war fought in 1971 over the right to speak Bangla in what used to be Pakistan translated directly into a vision for a digital environment in their own language. Anushah’s dissertation traces how the twin motivations of nationalism and techno-optimism in the hands of this Bangladeshi community laid the foundation for a Bangla computing stack.

Fore more information on their projects, and to see the complete list of Lyman Fellows, check out our Lyman Fellowship page.

Questions? Email lara [​at​] berkeley.edu