The International Reporting Project is excited to announce two kinds of religion grants for international and U.S. journalists, both supported by a new grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. The two initiatives will take place over different times of the year and with different application deadlines, so please read the following descriptions carefully.

Nine-Month International Fellowships

IRP will grant up to five reporting fellowships for international journalists. The fellowships will support nine-month-long religion reporting projects from April 1 to December 31, 2013.

These fellowships are open to journalists in any country in the world outside of the United States. Qualified applicants will include influential journalists and media figures who are actively engaged in the new media landscape in order to support reporting projects on religion.

All candidates must fill out an application form on which they should describe the stories they would produce during the nine-month fellowship. A brief telephone interview with finalists would also be part of the selection process.

The application deadline for the international religion fellowships is March 8, 2013.

International IRP Religion Fellows should propose producing both long- and short-form reports in a variety of media, such as in-depth stories that will appear in print, online, radio or television media, as well as blog posts, tweets, slideshows and video documentaries.

Applicants should describe in detail (at least 1,000 words) the kinds of stories they will cover in their countries or regions. All subjects dealing with the role of religion in the applicant’s country would be eligible for consideration, including tensions or conflict between communities of different faiths, as well as the intersection of religion and politics, economics, access to health, housing, water, the impact of religion on arts and culture, religion and human rights, treatment of minorities and other issues.

A stipend of US$12,000 will be provided to each of the five international journalists selected for these reporting fellowships. International IRP Religion Fellows may use part of their annual stipend to travel, but in general these fellowships are intended for international Fellows to report on religion from their country of residence in 2013.

Read our frequently asked questions and apply for international religion fellowships by March 8, 2013.

Three-Week Fellowships for U.S. Journalists

IRP will also grant up to five reporting fellowships for U.S. journalists in the fall. These fellowships will support three-week-long travel reporting grants to any country in the world with important stories on religion.

The fellowships will begin in Washington on September 19, 2013, with a two-day orientation session at IRP’s offices in the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, followed by departure for their selected countries on September 21. All Fellows must return to Washington on October 13, at which time a three-day session in Washington will take place, including presentations by the Fellows. The program ends October 16.

As with the International IRP Religion Fellows, U.S. applicants are encouraged to produce multimedia content and to use social media and new media for their stories, which will focus upon international religion issues.

IRP will purchase U.S. Fellows’ roundtrip international tickets and offer each Fellow a lump-sum travel stipend of $5,000 to help pay expenses for the three-week trip.

All of the content produced by the international and U.S. IRP Religion Fellows would be co-owned by the IRP and the selected Fellows. All material (subject to editorial review) would be posted on the IRP site, along with links to other organizations where the work of the IRP Religion Fellows appears.

Read our frequently asked questions and apply for U.S. religion fellowships by June 28, 2013.