BLUE Residency

Semester-long residency to pursue a project of your own design
ApplyApplications closed for Winter 2025

Please write to us if you have any additional questions.

What is the BLUE Residency?

We want to hear from those of you who are passionate about ideas, projects, processes that do not fit within conventional research domains.

Beautiful, Limitless, Unconstrained Exploration (BLUE) is an approach to research Building 21 has developed and refined over the last 8 years. We believe there are vast amounts of knowledge that rests beyond what is conventionally recognized. We developed BLUE to facilitate scholars of all levels, backgrounds, and disciplines to discover that knowledge.

The BLUE Residency supports students who are dedicated to pursue an original project that falls outside of traditional research paradigms. By being a resident, students receive space, an interdisciplinary scholar community, mentorship, access to networks, and training to develop their research at Building 21.

Each winter semester, we grant 15 - 20 residencies to build an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars that apply the BLUE model to daring and unconventional research. Together, we believe we can uncover new perspectives, methodologies, and paradigms for a better future.

Details

Application Deadline
December 8, 2024
Apply

Position type
Research resident

Cohort size
15-20 residents

Duration
January 2025 - April 2025

Who
Open to all McGill students of all levels (undergraduate, master's, PhD, post-doc) who are in good academic standing and to students who have graduated from McGill in the past 12 months.

This is not for credit.

*This year, BLUE is an unpaid residency where select students will receive compensation in the form of exclusive access to top executives from MILA, Google Deepmind, Microsoft, The Government of Quebec, and other connections through the BLUE Residency.

The Program

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.

Requirements
10 - 15 hours of physical presence at Building 21 per week across

  • Doing research in the space
  • Project check-ins
  • Weekly Lightning sessions
  • Training workshops
  • Regularly scheduled talks and events

In-person presence at B21 leads to essential interdisciplinary connections and conversations.

Responsibility
To cultivate a community of scholars aligned with the BLUE ethos, we ask you to:

  • Talk to other scholars about your project
  • Develop your project in the space
  • Present your project with the community
  • Share ideas and feedback with a group of interdisciplinary scholars
  • As an aspect of the residency, students may be asked to participate in Building 21 initiatives or host scholar events

See: Our philosophy of education

Showcase
Scholars will be asked to present their work to the community at the end of the residency in a project showcase.

More information

Anita Parmar
Co-director, Building 21

Email

Ollivier Dyens
‍‍
Co-director, Building 21

Email