Applications Invited for Urban Fellows Programme (UFP)

The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) announces the launch of the fourth iteration of the Urban Fellows Programme (UFP). The UFP is a scholarship-based, ten-month, full-time, residential, inter-disciplinary fellowship based at the IIHS City Campus in Bengaluru.

India is emerging as the site of perhaps the largest urban transition that will unfold over the next two to three decades, which is projected to add 300 million more urban residents by 2050. This transition will bring not just opportunities through increased economic growth and employment but also challenges as cities will continue to deal with inequality, deprivation and environmental degradation.Converting these challenges into opportunities will need collective and coordinated efforts by governments, private enterprises, civil society, communities, and citizens.

India’s emerging urban transition needs a new generation of urban practitioners with adequate knowledge, reflective thinking, appropriate skills, new perspectives, and the right values. Current education takes place in disciplinary silos like planning, design, technology, management, economics, humanities, legal and urban studies education, and is unable to creatively respond to these challenges. More than technology or capital, the real and urgent obstacle to transforming urban India lies in the inability of our education system to produce urban practitioners who can enable the integration, management and coordination of these disparate processes occurring in today’s urban and urbanising settlements.

The UFP 2019-20 invites applications from recent graduates and young professionals from diverse educational backgrounds with an interest in the Urban. Applicants should be born on or after 1 August 1989 to be eligible. Through the UFP, Fellows will:

• Understand issues of urbanisation in India and the Global South from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
• Learn from practice as a young professional seeking to enter the urban sector.
• Develop skills necessary to analyse, understand, and identify key urban issues in India.
• Build a foundation from which to design inter-disciplinary urban interventions.
• Network with diverse global, national, and local thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and change makers
• Learn from a diverse and experienced faculty who bring together theory and practice

Applications to the UFP 2019-20 open on 18 March 2019 and close on 18 April 2019. For more information, please click here.