by Steven Tagle
How to Secure a Fulbright Letter of Affiliation from the Host Country
The 2026-2027 Fulbright U.S. Student Program award cycle is currently open, and the national deadline is October 7, 2025, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time. If you’re working on your application, you know that securing an affiliation in your host country is one of the most time-consuming and nerve-wracking parts of applying.
Fulbright requires all study/research applicants to list a proposed affiliation with a university, laboratory, library, non-governmental organization, foundation, or other institution. You might also be required to submit a letter of affiliation from this institution by the application deadline. Make sure you understand the affiliation requirements for the country and award for which you are applying. This information can be found on the country detail page.
The affiliation letter demonstrates that you have reached a certain level of preparation for and seriousness about your project. Securing the letter is a crash course in navigating the bureaucracy of your proposed host country, communicating your research needs and goals with local contacts, and showing that an institution in your field believes in you and is willing to support your project.
After completing graduate school, I received a creative writing research grant to study Greek mythology in Greece. After much searching and networking, I secured an affiliation with a Greek Fulbright scholar who was a professor in the Department of American Literature and Culture at a university in northern Greece. In this article, I will walk you through how I found my affiliation and give you tips on obtaining that coveted letter.
1. Start early and be patient.
Once you’ve settled on a host country and research topic, start brainstorming how you might find a sponsoring institution in the host country. This was challenging for me because at the time, I had never been to Greece and didn’t have any contacts in the country. How would I convince a stranger in a country I’d never been to to put their faith in me and my project?
Save yourself stress by beginning your search well ahead of the deadline. It takes a lot of time to narrow down your search for an affiliation. You’ll encounter dead ends, people you reach out to might not respond to you, and the decision to support your project might have to pass through a bureaucratic approval process before an organization can agree to commit to your project. This might also be your first experience with the country’s work culture, which can be very different from that of the United States. For example, most businesses shut down in Greece in August, which is generally when the entire country goes on vacation. Patience and flexibility are key.
2. Refine the elevator pitch for your project.
To begin reaching out to people about your project, you’ll need at least a draft of your to share with them. I also suggest preparing an elevator pitch, a conversational summary of your project that is just two or three attention-grabbing lines long. A version of this pitch can become your abstract/summary of the proposal, which is one of the application’s required short answer questions. Delivering these lines will soon become second nature to you. Once you’re on fellowship, you’ll be repeating them a lot! Keep in mind that your project proposal is a living document that is likely to evolve over time as you share your project with others and begin to execute it on the ground.
3. Begin close to home, but be prepared to step out of your comfort zone.
I suggest starting your search close to home, using your existing network and contacts. I started by listing all the Greece-related contacts in my network; I then reached out to them, shared my research proposal, and asked whether they could suggest any institutions or contacts in Greece. I attended the office hours of professors at my university who taught classes about Greece and Greek mythology. I combed through my college and fellowship networks, reconnecting with my freshman-year classics professor and a Greek American roommate.
From there, I slowly expanded my circle. I got in touch with the U.S. Program Coordinator at the Fulbright Foundation in Greece and spoke with previous grantees to Greece in creative writing. At the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, I stumbled across the booth for Writing Workshops in Greece, a group of writers with deep connections to the country who run an annual writing program on the island of Thasos. One of those writers was a Fulbright Scholar in Greece, and she connected me with a professor in Thessaloniki who eventually became my host country adviser.
Other avenues that Fulbright suggests for identifying an affiliation include connecting with international students at your home university, visiting Fulbright professors, conducting internet searches of faculty at universities in your proposed country, reaching out to contacts from previous experience abroad, and taking advantage of the educational advising sections of embassies or consulates. Be prepared to step out of your comfort zone. This process requires introducing yourself to people, making cold calls, and sending cold emails to solicit support for your project. Although this process can be difficult, it’s great practice for the fellowship, no matter what discipline you’re in.
If you can, I would also recommend traveling to your prospective host country this summer to see whether life there suits you and to meet with potential affiliations.
4. Request the affiliation letter.
Once you’ve identified an adviser and shared your statement of grant purpose with them, it’s time to request the affiliation letter.
According to Fulbright, the letter “should indicate the author’s willingness to work with you on the intended project and it should speak to the feasibility and validity of what is being proposed. The letter should also indicate any additional resources or contacts that the adviser can provide to support the work.” The organization also notes that “if the proposal contains a strong research component, you must have host country contacts that can support the research, provide access to required resources, and/or advise you during the grant period.”
My letter was one page long and contained four paragraphs. The first paragraph stated the basics: the department would support my Fulbright application and recognized that I would be a valuable visiting scholar and researcher, and I would be welcome to work within the department during my fellowship year. It stated who my adviser would be and that we had already met to discuss my project and timeline in detail. The next paragraph discussed the value of my proposed project in greater detail and the contributions it would make to Greece and the United States. It expressed the writers’ strong belief in my dedication to my project and in the caliber of my writing. The third paragraph focused on community engagement. It invited me to teach a creative writing workshop at the university and emphasized my skills as a published writer and teacher of writing. The fourth paragraph discussed additional resources and facilities the university could offer me, and the concluding paragraph reiterated the institution’s support for my project and willingness to host me. It was signed by the professor who agreed to be my adviser and by the department head.
Lastly, make sure to adhere to Fulbright’s formatting requirements: the letter of affiliation should be written in or translated into English, printed on the official letterhead of the institution and/or individual in the host country with whom you’re proposing to work, and be signed by the author. You should upload a scanned version of the original hard-copy letter with handwritten signatures into your application. Good luck!
A Stanford graduate and the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Institute of Current World Affairs, as well as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Steven has taught and mentored students for 20 years. As a published writer, journalist, and former speechwriter for the U.S. ambassador to Greece, he knows how to draw out applicants’ unique stories and craft compelling personal statements that help their applications stand out from the pack. Click here to get in touch.
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