About CLIMPACT

CLIMPACT (Charting the Landscape of Climate Litigation Impacts) is a four-year interdisciplinary research project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) through a Starting Grant under the Italian Science Fund (FIS). Based at the University of Bari Aldo Moro and led by Giuseppe Naglieri, CLIMPACT provides the first systematic empirical framework for measuring the real-world impacts of climate litigation across legal, social, cultural, and economic domains. The project analyses a global dataset of 500 cases — approximately 20 per cent of all climate litigation worldwide — to trace how court proceedings reshape regulatory frameworks, corporate behaviour, public discourse, and policy reform.

The Fellows Programme

The CLIMPACT Fellows Programme brings together an international network of early-career researchers whose work intersects with climate litigation, climate governance, environmental law, or the broader relationship between law, society, and climate change. It is designed to create a structured scholarly community around the project — a space where emerging researchers can connect with one another and with the wider CLIMPACT ecosystem, which includes the project’s research team, its Scientific Advisory Board, and its network of international collaborators and rapporteurs.

Fellowship is open-ended: it carries no predetermined expiration and is intended to accompany Fellows throughout the life of the project and, where possible, beyond it. The Programme is built around several concrete dimensions of participation, outlined below.

Visibility and Recognition

Each Fellow is listed on the CLIMPACT website with their name, institutional affiliation, and area of research. This public recognition formally associates the Fellow with the project and provides early-career researchers with international visibility within a growing and increasingly prominent field of scholarship.

The Fellows Network

Fellows join a dedicated network sustained by a permanent communication channel, enabling ongoing exchange across disciplines, career stages, and jurisdictions. The network functions as an intellectual home base: a place to share work, discuss developments in climate litigation, signal opportunities, and build the kind of sustained collegial relationships that are often difficult to establish at the early stages of an academic career.

Periodically, the network convenes through online meetings where Fellows can discuss their own research, exchange perspectives on emerging issues in the field, and engage directly with members of the CLIMPACT team. These gatherings are designed to be informal and intellectually generative — closer to a research group than to a formal seminar.

Fellows Seminar

Alongside the periodic network meetings, CLIMPACT will organise a dedicated Fellows Seminar on a regular basis. The Seminar offers Fellows the opportunity to present their ongoing research — whether a dissertation chapter, a draft article, or a work in progress — and to receive structured feedback from the CLIMPACT team and from fellow members of the network. For doctoral candidates and early post-doctoral researchers in particular, this provides a rare international forum in which to test ideas, sharpen arguments, and develop their scholarly voice within a supportive and rigorous environment.

Early Access to CLIMPACT Research

Fellows receive advance access to the project’s working papers, analytical briefs, and Monitor Series publications before their public release. This early circulation is intended to keep Fellows closely connected to the intellectual trajectory of the project and to foster a genuine sense of participation in CLIMPACT’s knowledge production. Fellows are encouraged to engage with these materials, offer comments, and bring them into dialogue with their own research.

Conference Participation

CLIMPACT’s annual conference will include a dedicated space for Fellows to present their work. This may take the form of a Fellows panel, a poster session, or another format suited to the conference programme. Participation in the annual conference offers Fellows a platform to share their research with the broader CLIMPACT community, including members of the Scientific Advisory Board and invited scholars from around the world.

Future Opportunities

As the project develops, CLIMPACT will progressively open further opportunities to Fellows. These may include funded visiting fellowships at the University of Bari, invitations to co-author publications within the project’s various series, and involvement in collaborative research initiatives. Each opportunity will be announced separately with its own terms, timeline, and selection criteria. Fellows will have priority access to these calls.

Who Should Apply

The Programme welcomes expressions of interest from advanced master’s students, recent graduates, doctoral candidates, and early-career post-doctoral researchers working in law (with particular emphasis on climate law, environmental law, comparative law, international law, and human rights law), sociology and the social sciences, or political science and policy studies. Candidates whose work sits at the intersection of these disciplines, or who bring methodological expertise in empirical legal research, are especially encouraged to apply.

There are no restrictions based on nationality, institutional affiliation, or geographic location. What matters is a genuine scholarly engagement with climate litigation and its societal dimensions, and a desire to be part of an international community committed to advancing the field with intellectual ambition and methodological rigour.

Selection

This first round will select approximately 10 to 15 Fellows. Selection is carried out by the Principal Investigator on the basis of the submitted materials. The assessment considers the relevance of the candidate’s research interests to the themes and methodology of CLIMPACT, the quality of the candidate’s academic profile relative to their career stage, and the potential for meaningful intellectual engagement with the project. Disciplinary diversity and geographic breadth will inform the composition of the cohort.

The Call may be reopened for subsequent rounds as the project evolves and the Fellows network grows.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should submit the following materials through the Climpact Application Hub by 3rd May 2026:

1. Curriculum Vitae — including educational background, research experience, publications (if any), and relevant professional activities. There is no prescribed format; the CV should be sufficiently detailed to allow an assessment of the candidate’s profile and trajectory.

2. Statement of Interest (max. 500 words) — a concise text explaining the candidate’s research interests, their connection to the themes of CLIMPACT, and what draws them to the Fellows Programme. This is not a research proposal: its purpose is to convey scholarly motivation and intellectual affinity with the project.

Notification of results: within four weeks of the deadline

Fellowship commencement: upon notification of selection

Contact

For enquiries regarding the Fellows Programme or this Call for Interest, please write to climpact.stg@uniba.it.