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The Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellowship Programme

14 November 2007

The University of Oxford and Princeton University have jointly launched a new post-doctoral fellowship programme for nationals of developing countries who wish to undertake research on the role of development and developing countries in the global political economy.

The Global Leaders Fellowship Programme will offer six fellowships in each of the next five years (beginning September 2008). The scholars will spend one year at Oxford, based at the Global Economic Governance Programme and the Centre for International Studies, and one year at Princeton, based in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The scholars will be supported by broader networks of senior scholars and practitioners who will ensure that they receive mentoring and assistance not just during their time as Fellows, but afterwards. There will be advice and support for those seeking to return to their own countries to contribute to policymaking and scholarship, and this will be bolstered by material support from a ‘returning with ideas’ fund.

The programme is being financed by the generous support of Princeton and Oxford alumni who will be providing funding over five years to the two universities.

At Oxford, the Programme is being led by Dr Ngaire Woods, founder of the Global Economic Governance Programme and expert on the IMF and World Bank, along with Dr Andrew Hurrell, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Latin America expert (recently elected to the Montague Burton Professorship in International Relations), and Yuen Foong Khong, Fellow of Nuffield and Asia expert. At Princeton, leadership is provided by Robert O. Keohane, Professor of International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and a leading scholar of international institutions, along with Professor Helen Milner, Director of the Niehaus Centre and a specialist on aid and institutions, and Africa expert and political scientist Professor Jennifer Widner.

Dr Woods said: ‘ “A white man’s club” is how some scholars and officials see global economic governance and the debates and scholarship which address it. Through the Global Leaders Fellowships we seek to broaden the club, bringing in the best and brightest from all corners of the world to deepen the world’s expertise and find better solutions in global economic governance.’

Professor Keohane, from Princeton University, said: ‘With a year of work at Oxford and a year at Princeton, the Global Leaders Fellows will be world-class scholars of international political economy and the politics of multilateral institutions. We expect them to return to their countries with new ideas, and with the capacity to help reinvigorate their institutions of higher education and to provide effective advice to their governments, as they seek to make globalization work for poor people in poor countries.’

The closing date for applications for the Global Leaders Fellowship Programme is 26 November 2007. For more information, please contact the Oxford University Press Office at press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk or 01865 280534

Notes to editors

  • Dr Ngaire Woods is Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme and Dean of Graduates at University College, Oxford. Her most recent book is The Globalizers:the IMF, the World Bank and their borrowers. She has authored or co-authored three other books and numerous articles on international institutions, globalization, and governance. In 2005-2006 Dr Woods was appointed by the IMF Board to a three-person panel to report on the effectiveness of the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office. Since 2002 she has been an Adviser to the UNDP's Human Development Report. She was a member of the Helsinki Process on global governance and of the resource group of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Commission into Threats, Challenges and Change, and a member of the Commonwealth Secretariat Expert Group on Democracy and Development established in 2002 which reported in 2004.
  • Robert O Keohane is Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University. He is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984) and Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (2002). He is co-author (with Joseph S. Nye, Jr.) of Power and Interdependence (third edition 2001), and (with Gary King and Sidney Verba) of Designing Social Inquiry (1994). He has served as the editor of the journal International Organization and president of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, he won the Skytte Prize given by the University of Uppsala in 2005, and he holds honorary degrees from the University of Aarhus and Science Po in Paris.

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