Meryl Williams Fellowship 

The prestigious Meryl Williams Fellowship (MWF) supports female agricultural researchers across the Indo-Pacific to improve their leadership and management skills. The Fellowship aims to contribute to more secure food systems by providing women in agricultural science with greater access to the resources and capacity-building initiatives that lead to improvements in decision-making, building collaborative networks, and supporting career advancement to drive institutional progress towards gender equity.

Originally launched in 2020, the MWF is fully funded by ACIAR and, from 2024, is delivered by Tetra Tech International Development in partnership with the University of New England International Capacity Building.  

Following on from the outstanding success of the first two cohorts, which comprised forty-two women working in agricultural research across the Indo-Pacific, ACIAR is funding a further six cohorts, with the program to be delivered between 2024 and 2029. The first cohort will have Fellows drawn from ASEAN countries and will commence in the first half of 2025.

The MWF offers Fellows the chance to engage in intensive professional development through activities including

• Learning workshops - 8 working days each. 
  • Foundational immersive professional development workshop, held in the home country (or a regional location for cohorts comprising multiple countries)
  • Reflective workshop, held in Australia
• Mentoring program - Fellows are matched with a trained Mentor – usually from their home country – to support them on their Fellowship journey and provide guidance as they build management leadership and professional skills, and expand their networks.
• Collaborative Assignment - group assignments are completed over the course of the program.
• Professional Activity - tailored to the skills, background and professional development goals of each Fellow, for up to 2 weeks; may include work placement, organisational visits, and conference attendance.
• Digital engagement - access to the ACIAR digital learning platform, ACIAR Learn, with recommended content curated by the MWF Training Team.

MWF offers Fellows a multifaceted learning and development experience, with a series of activities designed to promote iterative learning that is grounded in the context of their work. Learning outcomes are suitably ambitious and practical, and promote personal growth in knowledge, skills, and confidence. 

Through providing executive leadership training and professional development opportunities to the individual women, the Meryl Williams Fellowship supports the institutions that they work within to identify and address systemic barriers to women’s advancement.

Fellows may be drawn from the following countries, either as part of a country-specific cohort or a regional cohort comprising multiple countries:

• Pacific Island countries including Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tong and Vanuatu 
• Papua New Guinea 
• East Asian countries including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam
  South and West Asian countries including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan 
• Eastern and Southern Africa