A research and writing cohort of doctoral students focused on urban issues

Scholarship and effective communication in urban fields increasingly requires multiple competencies that are difficult to acquire working alone within traditional departments or programs. The Urban Doctoral Fellows Program organizes an academic year cohort of up to ten students whose research focuses on urban issues, with an emphasis on strengthening writing and developing effective evidence-based arguments.

The program consists of lunch-time meetings to increase the clarity and substance of Urban Doctoral Fellows’ research, ideas, and approaches and explore their implications from a diverse set of views. Students share and improve papers and presentations aimed at within and cross-disciplinary audiences and learn how various disciplines engage in urban research through discussions with University of Chicago faculty and postdoctoral fellows.

Meetings are facilitated by Stephen Baker, Senior Research and Evaluation Scientist at the University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute, who organizes and moderates discussions.

The goal of each student’s full-year experience is to generate a paper and talk to be presented at a leading conference in their field. Travel and accommodation funding are provided by the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation. The program has resulted in fellows’ work being presented at many diverse professional conferences and in award recognitions by groups such as the American Sociological Association and the Urban Affairs Conference.

The fellowship has become a well-known opportunity for University of Chicago graduate students, running for over 10 years. Students may come from any department or school at the University of Chicago, and they may be in any year of their PhD.