Open Call for ELLIS Fellows and Scholar Nominations 2025

The call for nominations for ELLIS Fellows and Scholars is now open. ELLIS Program and Unit Directors are invited to submit new nominations within their respective Programs or Units. Detailed eligibility criteria and nomination guidelines can be found below. Kindly read the instructions carefully, as there have been a few important changes to the process this year. The deadline for submitting nominations is September 30th, 2025.

For any inquiries, please contact us at admin-fellows@ellis.eu.

Eligibility criteria and guidelines for ELLIS Fellow & Scholar nominations 2025

Research areas

A Program or a Unit is eligible to have new F&S nominations if all Fellows and Scholars in the respective Program or Unit submitted the information about their research fields. All Programs and Units will be contacted in a separate email to inform them about their status and any missing responses. Please note that all submitted data concerning research areas of existing Fellows and Scholars will remain confidential and will only be accessed by the Fellows Committee for the sole purpose of matching nominations with suitable reviewers.

Gender balance

When preparing your nominations please remember that it is preferable not to have a gender group among all Fellows and Scholars that exceeds 75% of the Program/Unit, and it is not acceptable to have a gender imbalance larger than 85%. Nominations in the Unit/Program that violate the 85% constraint will not be accepted. Moreover, candidates who fail the selection process may prevent candidates of the opposite gender who passed the selection from being promoted in the same Unit/Program. These candidates will be ranked using the reviewers’ score, and may be promoted as soon as the gender constraint can be satisfied in their Unit/Program.

Unit contribution fee

Note that the Scholar/Fellow nominations from a Unit recommended for acceptance by the reviewing committee will only be granted approval upon the completion of the unit contribution to ELLIS (the unit has paid the ELLIS membership fee or has agreed with ELLIS on providing the required minimal 1 FTE towards ELLIS coordination).

Fellow/Scholar nominations from outside of the unit but in the same country. 

The Unit directors can nominate ELLIS Fellows/Scholars from institutions outside of their ELLIS Unit but in the same country as their ELLIS Unit. The nominated Fellows/Scholars will be associated with the nominating Unit and need to demonstrate an existing connection with the nominating Unit in the form of at least one joint publication with a member of the nominating Unit in the past 5 years. The nomination needs to list this joint publication, including the information about the collaboration and a link to the pdf. Please note that the nominating unit (including these external nominations) still needs to meet the gender balance requirements, i.e., it is preferable not to have a gender group among all Fellows and Scholars that exceeds 75% of the Unit, and it is not acceptable to have a gender imbalance larger than 85%. In this case, the gender balance constraint applies to the union of internal and external nominations. Please note that each Fellow/Scholar can be associated with at most one unit. To limit the number of applications to a manageable size in the 2025 call, the unit director(s) can make a maximum of 5 nominations of researchers from institutions outside of the unit.

Number of nominations

The number of F&S nominations should fulfill the following criteria:

• the maximum number of F&S in a Program has been increased to 30 (including the program directors).
• for Units, other than gender balance, there are no additional constraints on the number of nominations.

Excellence criteria

Before submitting your nominations please carefully check the updated guidelines on the ELLIS website. Please submit your F&S nomination only if the candidates fulfill them and you are fully convinced that they will bring additional value to ELLIS.

Submission guidelines

If all the above criteria are fulfilled, please consider submitting your nominations via the EasyChair submission page provided via email to all Directors and Coordinators. Please do not share the submission link with anyone who is not directly supporting a Director in the submission process.If you are interested in being nominated as an ELLIS Fellow or Scholar, please contact your Unit/Program Director.

On the submission page, the Directors will find detailed instructions to submit nominations. They will be asked to complete the submission form in full and upload the candidate’s CV. Please, make sure all co-directors of your Program/Unit are listed as co-authors of the submission.After the nomination has been submitted, Directors will receive an automatic confirmation email from EasyChair. If you do not see it, please check your spam folder.

Nominations will not be considered if they are incomplete (e.g., if any sections of the form are left blank or marked as not applicable) or if they are submitted by individuals who are not Unit or Program Directors.

Scholar-Fellow transition

If you would like to promote an existing Scholar in your Program or Unit to the Fellow status, please note that only Scholars who have an academic age of more than 10 years can be considered as Fellow candidates. If this is the case, you may proceed with the nomination by following the instructions on the submission page. Please, make sure to select “Transition from Scholar to Fellow” in the “Nomination Type” field of the submission form. In case of Program/Unit Directors who are ELLIS Scholars, have an academic age of more than 10 years, and would like to apply for the ELLIS Fellow status, the nomination should come from two ELLIS Fellows outside their country of work.

Reviewing process

We expect from you that your Program/Unit will support the evaluation process by reviewing at least twice the number of candidates that you nominate. We may ask your help in motivating Fellows in your Program/Unit to help reviewing.

Below some important changes:

Inactive Fellows/Scholars

A Director may communicate that a Fellow or Scholar is inactive in their Unit/Program. Inactive Fellows/Scholars are redesignated as ELLIS Fellow/Scholar Alumni.

Expiration of the status of Scholar

The title of ELLIS Scholar expires when the candidate reaches the threshold of 15 years after their PhD*, and a new evaluation is needed for promotion to an ELLIS Fellow. E.g., a candidate has received their PhD in 2015 and has been elected as an ELLIS Scholar in 2025. In this case, the candidate will need to be nominated by 2030 for promotion to the ELLIS Fellow category. If an ELLIS Scholar is not nominated for the transition toFellow before the end of the 15th year after their PhD, the Scholar title will expire. Expired Scholars become ELLIS Scholar Alumni.

To support this process, we will send out a yearly reminder to Directors with a list of Scholars approaching the end of their eligibility period, and we will also contact the Scholars directly.

* Eligible career breaks (e.g. maternity leave) will be taken into consideration, following the ERC criteria described here.

Candidates based outside of Europe or leave the Unit/Program

If a Fellow or Scholar leaves Europe or their Unit/Program, they are redesignated as ELLIS Fellow/Scholar Alumni.