BLUE Community Fellows are scholars who pursue their idea within our space and broader community.

Our mission has always been to support scholars in pursuing bold and original ideas. We believe there are vast amounts of knowledge that rest beyond what is conventionally recognized. We want to facilitate scholars of all levels and disciplines to discover that knowledge with the support they need.

BLUE Community Fellows receive similar support and infrastructure under BLUE with greater flexibility. We encourage interested individuals to take advantage of the community fellow program to prepare for the resident fellow application. View the BLUE Resident Fellow page for full details.

Position type
Unfunded Scholar

Application
Rolling admissions

Duration
Year-long

‍Space
Access to our dedicated collaboration space at 651 Sherbrooke W. on the Downtown campus

Mentorship
Original ideas can be hard to develop. We offer mentorship for every fellow with 1:1 office hours.

Community
Join a group of curious scholars pursuing ideas across disciplines throughout our programs, as well as other student communities hosted within Building 21.

Function

‍Develop one’s personal, original, creative, and rigorous academic project in order to acquire the knowledge and skills to think beyond the acknowledged, the recognized, and the comfortable.

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‍Presence‍

Fellows will be required to work out of—and be physically present at—Building 21 for a minimum of 5 hours per week. In-person presence at B21 leads to essential interdisciplinary connections and conversations.

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Responsibility

• ‍Develop and present your project with the community

• Participate in one Lightning session per week

• Attend regularly scheduled talks and discussions

• Talk to other scholars about your projects

• Share ideas and feedback to a group of interdisciplinary scholars

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Showcase

‍Fellows will have the option to present their work to the community at the end of the Winter Fellowship in a project showcase.

Who
‍Open to all McGill students of all levels who are in good academic standing and to students who have graduated from McGill in the past 12 months.

Community Guidelines

Applicants will be asked to ‘wow’ the selection committee in the manner they prefer. This means choosing whatever platform they feel will best highlight both their ideas and personal strengths (video, text, music, filmed performance, unusual and original research work, etc.).

The application should show the originality and boldness of the idea submitted and the technical capacity of the applicant to make progress. We are looking for students who are passionate, engaged, autonomous, and are obsessed with knowledge, learning, and discovery. Think about the question or the unknown that you are trying to get at, and articulate it in your application.

Important: articulate the unknown that you're trying to uncover as clearly as you can!

Due to the expected large volume of applications, please aim for maximum impact and clarity as opposed to detail. We strongly recommend keeping videos and similar applications to be viewed within 3-5 minutes.

If you are shortlisted, we may call you for an interview where you are expected to explain your rationale for applying, and your overall goals.

Anita Parmar
‍Co-director, Building 21

Book a meeting

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Ollivier Dyens
‍‍Co-director, Building 21

Email