Fellowship Program
Our fellowship programs are an immersive professional and mentorship experience designed to push forward the frontiers of investigative journalism by incubating new ideas and projects.
Fellows are given the stability and creative freedom to explore stories that hold public institutions accountable. In the process we seek to build relationships that enrich Chicago’s media ecosystem.
The senior fellowship program seeks veteran journalists or researchers whose work aligns with our ethos to pursue projects they would otherwise not be able to advance. We do not have a public application process for senior fellows; rather, we consider them based on our existing relationships and our desire to support their important work within our mission. Our senior fellowship program is still in its infancy; our hope is that these individuals emerge as trusted mentors in our journalism community.
The reporting fellowship program is a professional and mentorship experience for emerging reporters to immerse themselves into our ongoing investigations and media projects. The fellowship is open to professionals, as well as students. By committing to a year of apprenticeship, the fellows build relationships with us and become an important part of our network. In addition to on-the-ground team investigation and research, the junior fellows meet with our journalism team regularly to report back on progress and discuss new lines of inquiry.
To apply, we ask prospective fellows to submit a resume, two references, three or fewer work samples, and a short video introducing themselves and explaining why they would like to work with us. The fellowship is offered on a yearly basis, with the application period typically opening in late summer, with a flexible start date.
Our fellowship program was made possible by funding from the McCormick Foundation until 2021. This program is seeking new funding - if you have an idea of possible funding sources, please reach out to us.
Senior Fellows
Stuart Flack is playwright, producer and social entrepreneur. His award-winning work includes productions/collaborations at many of the leading theaters in the United States. He has recently worked with The Seldoms a Chicago-based dance/theatre company, on two full-length works which examine power, politics, and social action that have toured nationally. In 2018/19 he was the Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence at University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2015, he was commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre Company to adapt John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me.
Stuart is formerly the Dean of The Graham School of Continuing Education at the University of Chicago, a Senior Fellow at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, Executive Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival, CEO of an Ed Tech startup, and a Partner at McKinsey & Co.
Audrey Petty is a writer and educator. Her stories have been published in such journals as African American Review, Story Quarterly, Callaloo, and The Massachusetts Review. Her poetry has been featured in Crab Orchard Review and Cimarron Review, and her essays have appeared in The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, Saveur, ColorLines, The Southern Review, Oxford American, Gravy, and the Best Food Writing anthology. She is the editor of High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (Voice of Witness/McSweeney's) and co-editor of The Long Term (Haymarket Press).
Audrey will work as part of the COVID-19 Journalism network as the editor of a series of obituaries for those who transitioned and were unable to have traditional South Side send-offs. Audrey will also incubate a potential South Side histories project that engages young people in non-traditional education models anchored by community-led historical additions and revisions.
past fellows
Sarah Geis is a Chicago-based producer and editor, and former artistic director of the Third Coast International Audio Festival. She was story editor for the Invisible Institute podcast Somebody, which was a 2020 Pulitzer finalist. She's edited for the New York Times audio, WNYC's Nancy and at Gimlet, and has produced documentaries for the BBC, Love + Radio, and CBC's Love Me, among others. She's the keeper of audioplayground.xyz and teaches at the University of Chicago and Northwestern.
Ben Austen is a writer from Chicago. He is the author of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction, shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice, and named one of the best books of 2018 by Booklist, Mother Jones and the public libraries of Chicago and St. Louis. A former editor at Harper’s Magazine, he is a story consultant on the podcast The City. His feature writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, The Best American Travel Writing, and many other publications. He is currently at work on a narrative nonfiction book about the parole system and the county’s practices around crime and punishment.
Ben used his fellowship to pursue a line of inquiry about the aging prison population. It was a subject that deeply engaged him but had not crystallized sufficiently to pitch to a media outlet. By the end of his fellowship, he had a contract with a publisher to write a book on the parole process and a podcast series in development that the Invisible Institute continues to work with him on.
Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant police misconduct attorney and organizer whose writing, litigation, and advocacy has focused on policing and criminalization of women and LGBT people of color for the past two decades. She is currently the Researcher in Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Criminalization at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, where she recently launched the Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action initiative. She is the author of several books including Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (Beacon Press 2017).
Andrea devoted her fellowship to reporting on gender violence within law enforcement, relying substantially on the Citizens Police Data Project and Invisible Institute staff and researchers. Her fellowship had the effect of making inquiry into gender violence by police an ongoing activity of the Invisible Institute.
Reporting Fellows
Erisa Apantaku is a Black/biracial, queer audio producer and educator from the lands of the Three Fires Confederacy of the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi First Nations (Chicagoland). Erisa produced a bonus episode of Somebody. Outside of her projects at the Invisible Institute, Erisa produces short audio documentaries for outlets such as BBC Radio’s ShortCuts. Her documentary work examines race and sexuality through a process that seeks to be vulnerable, accountable, and generative for all those involved.
Prior to coming to the Invisible Institute, Erisa served as executive producer of South Side Weekly Radio wherein she produced news features and interviews with artists, organizers, and everyday South Siders. Erisa has also worked as an audio educator, training a wide range of individuals across ages at South Side Weekly, Blok by Blok, IndyKids, and After School Matters.
past fellows
Annie Nguyen
Ellen Glover
Henri Adams
Maddie Anderson