Bridging the Gap | April 2026 Updates

NEW Applications
We are happy to announce applications for our 2026 New Era Workshop (NEW) are live! NEW is an annual three-day training program for PhD students in international affairs and related disciplines. The program will be held Sept. 24-26, 2026 at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs. Applications are due May 3 at 11:59 p.m. MT. Please share with your networks! For more information and to apply, visit our website.

RAPS Reception Recap
It was wonderful to see so many of you at International Studies Association (ISA) in Columbus! During the Research and Policy Section (RAPS) reception, Stephen J. Del Rosso, former Vice President of the International Program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was honored for the twenty+ years he spent championing the work of Bridging the Gap and other institutions who seek to eliminate barriers between research and policy. To honor his legacy, the RAPS leadership announced the inaugural Stephen J. Del Rosso Award for Excellence in Bridging the Gap Between Research and Policy, which will be presented to a member of RAPS each year during the ISA conference.

Bridging the Gap: Lessons Learned Report
For over two decades, Bridging the Gap has convened annual institutes designed to give scholars key skills and networks for conducting and disseminating policy-relevant research on important international issues. In this new report, we take stock of the impact of these programs and offer lessons learned based on our experiences. We hope the report will be useful to people in any field or discipline interested in designing a successful professional development program for scholars. View the report here.

Updates from Our Network

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships
NEH encourages submissions from independent scholars and junior scholars. The 2026 Fellowships competition will only accept projects for research in American history and culture and Western civilization. Competitive applications must focus on topics in the history, culture, and government of the United States in any period from the Colonial Era to the present, or topics in Western civilization from antiquity to the present.

Applications close on April 22, 2026.

SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS

Nate D.F. Allen

Artificial Intelligence for Africa’s Defense Force Toolkit and Leveraging Defense Technologies to Fight Terrorism in Africa Webinar Series, Africa Center for Strategic Studies

Jordan Branch

Virtual Territories: Technology, Representation, and the State in a Digital Age, Oxford University Press

Erica De Bruin, Ann Owen, and Stephen Wu

Can Student Evaluations Be Made More Representative? Testing Alternative Strategies, Studies in Higher Education

Chelsea Estancona

From Cocaine to Avocados: Criminal Market Expansion and Violence, International Organization

Hide and Seek: Offshore Financial Centers and Targeted Sanctions, British Journal of Political Science

Rachel Ann George
From Altruism to Instrumentalism? Aid-Diplomacy Mergers and the Future of Foreign Policy, Global Studies Quarterly