Mozilla Foundation Fellowships

Fellowship programme for experienced technologists developing democratic, open and fair digital infrastructure and upcoming technologists partnering with civil society organisations in Global Majority settings to apply their expertise to a defined civil technology issue.

The Mozilla Foundation Fellowships support upcoming and established visionary technologists developing solutions for identified civil and community issues and broader core technology issues for a democratic and fair digital future.

The fellowships award a stipend and project funding in two tracks:

• Track I: for developing technologists with demonstrated technical excellence who have already built meaningful projects or conducted important research within their local contexts, but haven’t yet achieved field-wide recognition.
• Track II: for established innovators seeking autonomy and resources to pursue ambitious, field-defining work independently.

The Fellowships support research and development focusing on core issues such as:

• Protecting User Privacy: for Fellows working to strengthen encryption and create tools that put security in the hands of those who need it most, for example through technical contributions, educational initiatives, policy development, and community organising.
• Auditing AI Systems: for Fellows working to make AI systems transparent and accountable to the people they affect, for example through technical auditing tools, policy frameworks, industry benchmarks, community advocacy, or educational approaches.
• Advancing Climate Justice: for Fellows working to reduce technology’s environmental impact and strengthen communities organising for climate justice, for example through research, digital tools, advocacy campaigns, or work that guides industry and policymakers toward systemic change.
• Protecting Creators: for Fellows working to ensure creators control and benefit from their work, for example through systems for consent, attribution, and compensation, or through creative contributions like art, organising, and advocacy that reshape norms and standards.
• Democratising Data: for Fellows working to data and AI development in community hands—through community-owned datasets, personal AI systems, small language models, or organizing frameworks that serve people rather than concentrate corporate power.
• Building Open Infrastructure: Fellows working on this issue will create internet infrastructure that’s open and interoperable—through protocols, standards, decentralised systems, educational resources, or advocacy that keeps the internet open and accessible to all.
  

Track I (Embedded) Fellows will be based at a nominated host organisation and will bring the technical expertise required to tackle a specific community challenge. Fellows will receive a stipend and project fund to design and conduct a project to address an issue identified by the host organisation – for example, building privacy tools for human rights defenders, developing accessible technology training for community organisers, or creating data governance systems for advocacy groups. The host will provide mentorship, collaboration, and community connections to advance the fellow’s work. For the 2026 application round, Track I applicants must be based in Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, the MENA region, Mexico, UK, US, or the EU.

For the 2026 fellowships, the Embedded Fellows are invited to collaborate with the following host organisations:

• Arab Reform Initiative: an independent think tank dedicated to advancing inclusive democracy and social justice in the MENA region, seeks to collaborate with a fellow to investigate surveillance infrastructure in MENA.
• Baraza Media Lab: a non-profit committed to creating a strong and collective media voice through experimentation, knowledge sharing, and networking, seeks to collaborate with a fellow to develop a technical resource or intervention focused on how AI and emerging technologies impact African storytelling and journalism.
• Bellingcat: an independent investigative collective of researchers and citizen journalists, seeks to collaborate with a fellow to investigate security and safety risks in open source investigation tools—helping journalists and researchers worldwide understand vulnerabilities before using tools that could compromise their work or safety.
• Instituto Fogo Cruzado: a non-profit organisation working to make cities safer through open and collaborative technologies to tackle armed violence, seeks to collaborate with a fellow to develop automated data pipelines for tracking police violence across Brazil.
• Open Supply Hub: a non-profit powering the transition to safe and sustainable production with the world’s most complete open global supply chain map, seeks to collaborate with a fellow to explore what data systems and tools grassroots trade unions need to become more powerful stakeholders in supply chain accountability.
• Social Media Exchange (SMEX): advancing digital rights in West Asia and North Africa (WANA), seeks to collaborate with a fellow to investigate control over digital infrastructure, data, and online actors in the WANA region.
• Unitary Foundation: an organisation working to create a quantum technology ecosystem that benefits the most people, seeks to collaborate with a fellow on developing high-impact open source quantum computing tools that benefit the growing user and developer community, with a preferred focus on benchmarking, compilation, and error-resilience.

Track II (Independent) Fellows will receive a stipend and research fund to pursue ambitious ideas that address one or more of the core issues and have the potential for wide reaching impact across communities and the broader field. Projects should develop products, working systems, and other innovations that tangibly advance better technology futures – which could include building platforms that demonstrate alternative models, conducting research that shifts policy conversations, or creating tools that enable other technologists to build better systems.