Next Generation Foresight Practitioners

THE BALKANS FELLOWSHIP

The Balkans Fellowship

To honour the memory of our late colleague Sophie Middlemiss, who had a passion for the Balkans, we have created a special Balkans NGFP Fellowship. This means, for the fourth year, we will reserve at least one spot within our fellowship cohort to be granted to a fellow from the Balkans.

This includes the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. We know that some parts of Greece and Türkiye are also considered part of the Balkans, so if you are from one of these parts, you are still eligible for this special fellowship.

The 2027 Balkans Fellow, Fatlum Jashari from Kosovo, brings together young people from both sides of the Kosovo–Serbia border to imagine shared futures for their region by 2040. Through conversations and foresight workshops, Border Communities 2040 creates space beyond current political tensions for young people to explore possible futures and identify steps towards the ones they want to shape.

The 2026 Balkans Fellow, Yigit Karatas from Türkiye, explores how energy transition policies in Türkiye and the Balkans can address energy poverty and support more equitable outcomes for marginalised communities.

The 2024 Balkans Fellow, Roxana Chiritoiu from Romania, is focused on finding better ways for Central and Eastern European countries to collaborate on tackling climate change.

The 2023 Balkans Fellow, Sabina Mihailescu, also from Romania, focused on sustainability in neighbourhoods through her project ÎntreVecini. Click the video below to watch 2023 Balkans Fellow Sabina Mihailescu speak about her project and NGFP experience.

We seek applicants who are:

  • 18–35 or older with less than 1 year of foresight experience
  • With nationality and are living in the Balkans region
  • Passionate about systems-level change and long-term impact
  • Committed to learning, collaboration, community, and network-building
  • Have a bold futures-focused project idea for their communities or globally that can be enhanced, scaled, or deepened by using foresight, and
  • Working on challenges related to: Climate & Just Transitions, Democracy & Sustainable Development, Emerging Technologies, Futures Methods From Around the World & Indigenous Futures, Health, Intergenerational Fairness, Nuclear Security & Peacebuilding, and Rural Futures.
Applications have now closed

In Memoriam
Sophie Middlemiss

Sophie was a loved and dedicated member of SOIF’s team who sadly passed away in 2021. She was fabulous to work with and we were lucky to have such a formidable brain and communicator as a team member.

She was challenging in her commitment to get the right message across and passionate in wanting to build a better future. She was fun, driven, imaginative, with a little bit of wildness under her composure.

We hope that this fellowship will live on as a lasting reminder of Sophie’s spirit and her commitment to making the world a better place.