Open call for 2027 research programs

We understand the CCA as a research institution committed not only to producing new knowledge, but also with making that knowledge productive. We apply architectural perspectives to questions beyond the discipline’s usual scope, while bringing methods from other fields to subjects traditionally understood as architectural. Through research, we seek to combine perspectives emerging from architectural, curatorial, publishing, and academic practices, and to create opportunities for critical inquiry that connect architecture to contemporary public concerns.

Applications are now open for four CCA research programs in 2027: the Virtual Fellowship Program, Research Fellowship Program, Photography Research Fellowship Program, and Sabbatical@CCA Program. Together, they offer different ways of working with the CCA Collection, exchanging knowledge, and developing research across disciplines, geographies, and forms of practice. Applications must be submitted by October 16, 2026.

The CCA Virtual Fellowship Program supports our ongoing investigation into how digitized material from the CCA Collection, as well as through our Find and Tell Elsewhere initiative, can generate new historical configurations and timely interpretations, while extending access to architectural research beyond the physical spaces of the CCA.
For 2027, the program focuses on the historiographical and methodological possibilities of drawing intersectional lines between diverse forms of architectural practice on the African continent beginning in the 1950s. We invite research that connects bodies of digitized archival material while potentially looking toward physical archives in specific African and/or diasporic urban contexts, contributing to broader efforts to support African-led architectural archives. Two virtual fellows will each undertake a three-week fellowship, between mid-November and mid-December 2026 or between mid-January and mid-March 2027. The program also brings the fellows into conversation with one another, creating opportunities to exchange perspectives and research insights. 

The CCA Research Fellowship Program supports innovative, advanced research and new forms of intellectual exchange capable of generating longer-term dialogue and debate. We welcome early-stage, interdisciplinary research on architecture, urbanism, landscape, and design. Current areas of particular interest include the infrastructural dimensions of built and natural environments; land-management practices across geographies and historical periods; relationships between architecture and new media, particularly generative AI; and African diasporic networks across pedagogy and practice. The fellowships are open to researchers, architects, and curators who hold a PhD or have equivalent professional experience. We particularly welcome approaches that expand how the built environment is investigated, from anthropology and Indigenous studies to other fields and forms of knowledge.

The 2027 iteration of the CCA Photography Research Fellowship is developed in collaboration with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London and foregrounds our shared research interests in the critical legacies of practices of imperial exposure. Photography is itself a technology of exposure. Photographs have documented imperial processes of conquest, territorial expansion, and everyday violence while also participating in the circulation of the systems of knowledge through which imperial power was sustained.
Applicants are invited to approach the CCA’s photography collection as a site of experimentation and inquiry into these histories. Comprising approximately 65,000 photographs—more than half dating from before 1900—the collection includes extensive material produced across Asia, North and East Africa, Indigenous territories across what is now the North American West, Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere. The fellowship asks how these photographic objects and their circulation might expose the networks, encounters, and material remains of imperialism.

Sabbatical@CCA Program opens the CCA to researchers seeking a sustained period of research, creation, mobility, and dialogue anchored in the holdings of our Collection. While the CCA is always open to researchers, Sabbatical@CCA provides a more structured form of engagement and places particular emphasis on the curatorial potential of research already in progress. The fellow receives dedicated office space, access to the CCA Collection, and tailored research assistance from our Reference librarians. Working with the our Public and Curatorial divisions, the fellow will develop a reading of a cross-cutting theme through objects in the Collection. The program invites researchers to identify transversal movements across our holdings and to consider how archival material can be activated through contemporary research questions.

Explore the individual calls for full eligibility requirements, fellowship dates, application procedures, and further details. We also invite you to browse the work of past fellows and research activities on our timeline. For more, and to find out about the upcoming opportunities, subscribe to the CCA newsletter.