Building on a partnership established in 2001, Oxford University and Princeton University have launched a new post-doctoral fellowship initiative, the Global Leaders Fellowship Program, created to enhance the capacity of developing countries in the areas of scholarship and policy.

Beginning in September 2008, up to six fellowships will be awarded annually to promising, early-career scholars from developing countries, which will allow fellows to spend one year at Oxford and one year at Princeton pursuing post-doctoral research, with funding provided by the program to cover fellows' full living costs. At Oxford they will be based at the Global Economic Governance Programme and the Centre for International Studies within the Department of Politics and International Relations. At Princeton fellows will be based in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Program leadership at Oxford is being provided by Dr. Ngaire Woods, a well-known authority on the International Monetary Fund and on negotiations between wealthy and developing countries. Leadership at Princeton is being provided by Robert Keohane, Professor of International Affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and a leading scholar of international institutions.

The Global Leaders Fellowship Program is made possible through a generous gift to Oxford and Princeton by anonymous donors.

Some of the most pressing challenges the international community faces, such as climate change, pandemics, energy security, and poverty, require global, interconnected solutions. However, policy making on these issues has been dominated by a small number of industrialized countries, and often missing in policy debates within global institutions have been the priorities, experience, and challenges faced by developing countries. Thus, the program's main objectives are to contribute to the training of a cohort of scholar-practitioners who will help devise innovative strategies to enhance the value of global institutions to the people of developing countries, and to create a network of scholars and practitioners, particularly from developing countries, with expertise in the key issues surrounding globalization.

"The new initiative seeks to address some of the bias in the world's community of scholars and practitioners in global governance," said Keohane, a member of the Program’s executive committee. "For example, one of the serious problems faced by poor countries in the world political economy is that they do not have enough highly qualified negotiators. This is particularly a problem for small countries in Africa and the poorer parts of Asia and Latin America. The Global Leaders Fellowship Program is designed to help improve this situation, by providing opportunities for a small number of exceptionally talented people to do post-doctoral work at Oxford and Princeton."

Keohane continued: "Our hope is that these fellows will return to universities in their home countries, creating a multiplier effect by training many more students. In pursuit of this goal, we plan to build a network of alumni of the program, working in developing countries, that will help to provide mutual support and a continuing flow of information and ideas to people located from Bangladesh to Botswana."

In addition to the fellowships, the Global Leaders Fellowship Program seeks to build a broad network of senior scholars and practitioners who will ensure that fellows receive mentoring and assistance during and after their time at Oxford and Princeton. A high-level Advisory Council comprised of established scholar-practitioners from developing countries has been appointed by the Program’s executive committee to offer advice and support to fellows returning to their own countries to contribute to policy making and scholarship. The Advisory Council's guidance and assistance will be bolstered by material support from a "returning with ideas" fund, which will encourage fellows to contribute to enhanced governance capacity in their home countries after their fellowship tenure.

Past experience makes the organizers of the Program confident that developing country governments will make good use of Program alumni. Dr. Woods commented on the basis of her past experience that "in every research project, we have found senior developing country officials keen to engage, to offer advice, to facilitate our research, and to offer constructive criticisms throughout."

The program's executive committee is comprised of Ngaire Woods, Andrew Hurrell, and Yuen Foong Khong, of Oxford, and Robert Keohane, Helen Milner, and Jennifer Widner of Princeton.

Oxford and Princeton established a formal partnership in 2001 to support faculty research collaborations, including graduate student participation, and undergraduate student exchanges.