About
The AMIA Pathways Fellowship (APF) supports paid internships, mentorship, and targeted professional development to create new pathways into the media preservation field. Designed to reduce barriers to entry, the program serves individuals from a broad range of backgrounds and life circumstances with limited access to the profession. This includes those facing economic hardship, individuals who are disabled or neurodivergent, and those entering the field without access to traditional graduate education. By combining hands-on experience with guided mentorship and community-building, APF offers a holistic training approach to those who might otherwise be excluded from traditional professional pipelines.
APF supports the preservation of audiovisual collections in two ways – by expanding the number of professionals trained to care for and provide access to audiovisual heritage and by expanding the capacity of collecting institutions currently doing this work.
Many community-based collections include audiovisual materials—oral histories, home movies, broadcast recordings, and community media—that are central to understanding the cultural, civic, and artistic life of the myriad communities across the country. However, many of these collections are held at institutions without the resources or staff needed to manage their preservation and access.
APF addresses this gap in two key ways. First, by placing Fellows in internships at host sites, it provides immediate, hands-on support to institutions working to stabilize and preserve at-risk audiovisual materials. Second, the program creates new pathways into the archival field by offering paid internships, cohort-based training, mentorship, and now, extended alumni support, for individuals who might otherwise be excluded due to barriers such as geography, economic hardship, or lack of access to graduate education. Fellows develop practical skills while contributing to meaningful preservation projects at these sites, increasing institutional readiness and improving public access to important humanities collections.
Currently the Pathways Fellowship is available to US based individuals, but we are hoping to expand the program to international applicants in coming years.
The AMIA Pathways Fellowship is currently funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [RE-254879-OLS-23].
Applications for the 2025 Fellowship program are closed.
To participate in the AMIA Pathways Fellowship, applicants must be accepted into a paid internship at one of our partner host sites. Acceptance into the Fellowship program is distinct from acceptance into any individual internship and will occur after internship selections have been made.
Fellowship events begin June 10, 2025 and will continue weekly through September. Internship start dates are subject to the individual host site schedules. During the fellowship, in addition to the paid internship, fellows participate in weekly online professional development sessions for ten weeks (June – August), are paired with professionals in the field in a remote mentorship program (July – December),
We strongly encourage you to review the information about being a Pathways Fellow (PDF) to have a full view of the program, information about each component, Fellowship calendar, and time commitment.
Fellows must be based in the US. We are hoping to expand the program to international applicants in coming years.
We would like to invite you to become a Pathways partner with your organization providing a paid internship for a Pathways Fellow for our next cohort! Partnering with organizations to provide paid internships is critical in forging pathways in the audiovisual preservation field for people from groups historically underrepresented in the profession.