HAT Community Foundation invites applications to Senior Practice Fellowships, Senior Academic Fellowships and Junior Fellowships for 2027, focused on institutional design for the global coordination of the data economy, working with Dr Irene Ng, the foundation’s Principal Fellow.
Many of the most consequential problems in the data and AI economy span multiple states, jurisdictions and institutional systems. The people and organisations working to address them must coordinate data flows, incentives, rules and responsibilities across territorial boundaries. Yet such collaboration carries high transaction costs: establishing credible commitments, aligning diverse interests, reconciling legal and regulatory regimes, and sustaining accountability among actors with different mandates and sources of authority. Prevailing institutional arrangements often fail to resolve these coordination problems, allowing harms and conflicts to persist. States may then respond through corrective regulation and punitive enforcement, while the institutional capacity for states, firms and other actors to develop solutions collaboratively remains underdeveloped. The programme examines how new institutional arrangements can support those coordinating multi-state problems, strengthen public accountability and enable private markets to function more effectively.
Through theoretical development, applied research, design and practice, the fellowship will examine what new institutional arrangements can be formed to organise rights, authority, resources and responsibilities to support durable cooperation, human agency and the creation and distribution of value in the data economy.
Fellows are expected to commit approximately six hours each week to the programme. They will work alongside suitably selected AI agents to support research, analysis, design and communication, while retaining responsibility for the intellectual direction, judgment and quality of their work.
Senior Practice Fellows
Applications are invited from individuals working to shape data governance and policy within public and private global institutions, including intergovernmental organisations, international financial institutions and supranational bodies, global family offices, private equity firms, global think tanks, multinational corporations, sovereign wealth funds and other state investment bodies.
Senior Academic Fellows
Applications are invited from academics at institutions of higher education actively teaching and researching aspects of the digital economy, with an interest in developing research and pedagogy on data flows, incentives and institutional arrangements in the data and AI economy.
Junior Fellows
Applications are invited from product managers working in the digital sector who are familiar with developing and testing go-to-market hypotheses, and interested in applying these skills to the design and development of institutions for the data and AI economy.
Application dates
Applications open on 1 November 2026 and close on 20 November 2026. Results will be announced on 15 December 2026.
Briefing on the 2027 Foundation Fellowships will be held on the 28 Oct 2026 at 1pm GMT. Register at the link below: