Who can apply for a Chevening Fellowship?

Chevening Fellowships are aimed at mid-career professionals who have reached a position of influence and want to increase their knowledge, networks, and potential through tailored short courses, research, or professional placements at UK institutions.

Fellows are often people of significant standing in their home countries and will usually have completed some element(s) of higher education already.

Chevening Fellowship programmes typically have varying eligibility requirements. Information about programme-specific eligibility requirements can be found on individual fellowship programme pages.

Eligibility

General eligibility requirements for a Chevening Fellowship

To be eligible for a Chevening Fellowship you must:

• Be a citizen of a fellowship-eligible country or territory.
• Demonstrate the potential to rise to a position of leadership and influence.
• Demonstrate the personal, intellectual and interpersonal attributes reflecting this potential.
• Return to your country of citizenship at the end of the period of the fellowship.
• Have a postgraduate level qualification (or equivalent professional training or experience in a relevant area) at the time of application.
• Meet all programme-specific fellowship eligibility requirements.
• Not hold British or dual British citizenship.
• Not have received UK Government scholarship funding (including Chevening) within the last five years. You will only be eligible to apply for a Chevening Fellowship after a period of five years following the completion of your first UK Government-funded scholarship.
• Not be an employee, a former employee, or relative* of an employee of Her Majesty’s Government within the last two years from the opening of Chevening applications (including British Embassies/High Commissions, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Department for International Trade, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office), or a staff member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

*Immediate relatives are defined as parents or step-parents, siblings or step-siblings, children or step-children, spouse, civil partner or unmarried (where the couple have been in a relationship akin to marriage or civil partnership for at least two years).

Work experience

To find out if there are any additional eligibility requirements for your chosen fellowship, please check the relevant programme page.

Chevening Fellowship applicants must ensure that they meet the minimum work experience requirement for the fellowship programme that they are applying to before submitting their Chevening application:

• Minimum five years of work experience in a relevant related field. Some fellowship programmes have different/additional work experience requirements and you are advised to check all individual programme requirements before applying.

If you do not already have the level of work experience required for your chosen fellowship programme, you will be unable to submit your application.

Eligible types of work experience

The types of work experience that are eligible for Chevening can include:

• Full-time employment
• Part-time employment
• Voluntary work
• Paid or unpaid internships

You do not need to meet the work experience requirement in one period of employment. Applicants can submit up to fifteen different employment periods in order to meet the requirement. If you have held more than fifteen positions then please enter the periods which make up the greatest number of hours worked.

Please note: it is not a requirement of Chevening that you resign from your work position. You are advised to discuss your application with your employer and it is your responsibility to ensure that they will release you if you are selected for a Chevening Fellowship. The British embassy/high commission or the Chevening Secretariat cannot intervene in this.

How to calculate your work experience

Your entries will be calculated automatically by multiplying the number of weeks worked by the number of hours worked per week. For this calculation, a working week comprises 35-60 hours and a working year comprises 40-50 weeks. Anything that exceeds the upper limit for full-time employment will be deemed ineligible.

The minimum numbers of hours an applicant must have before applying for a Chevening Fellowship are as follows:

• Chevening Fellowships – five years’ work experience = 7,200 hours
• Chevening Fellowships – seven years’ work experience = 9,800 hours
• Chevening Fellowships – ten years’ work experience = 14,400 hours

If you have worked part-time, the minimum requirement will have been accumulated over a longer period.

https://www.chevening.org/apply/