Call for Interest – Climpact Fellows Programme – First Round

About Climpact

Climpact (Charting the Landscape of Climate Litigation Impacts: An Interdisciplinary Framework and Open Access Database) is a four-year research project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research through a Starting Grant under the Italian Science Fund (FIS 3 Call). Led by Giuseppe Naglieri at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Climpact is the first large-scale, global, empirical research effort to systematically measure and evaluate how climate litigation transforms legal frameworks, public policies, corporate practices, social narratives, public discourse, and market dynamics across jurisdictions. The project analyses a dataset of 500 cases — approximately 20% of global climate litigation — through the integration of legal, sociological, and economic methods, culminating in process tracing to establish causal mechanisms.

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.

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 an 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.

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, political science and policy studies and economics. Candidates whose work sits at the intersection of these disciplines, or who bring methodological expertise in empirical legal research, are especially encouraged to apply.

Climpact recognises that advancing the understanding of climate litigation and its societal impacts requires a plurality of perspectives shaped by different legal traditions, disciplinary formations, lived experiences, geographic contexts, and personal identities. The Programme welcomes candidates from all backgrounds and actively encourages applications from those whose experiences are underrepresented in international climate law research, and from scholars based in the Global South or in jurisdictions where climate litigation is only beginning to emerge as a field of inquiry.

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 their applications through the Climpact Application Hub:

1. A brief professional biography (max. 300 words) — describing the candidate's academic background, current or most recent institutional affiliation, research interests, and any relevant publications or professional activities.

2. A statement of interest (max. 500 words) — 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.

Timeline

Application deadline: 3rd May 2026

Notification of results: within two weeks of the deadline

Contact

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