Exploring what it means to build a country on the internet
Over three months, the Plumia Fellowship supports visionary thinkers, artists, and researchers who are reimagining the foundations of digital civilisation. Fellows receive funding, mentorship, and global visibility as they create original work on the future of citizenship, governance, and belonging in a borderless world.
This year, we’re proud to introduce our inaugural fellows.
Xiangyu Long
Doctoral Researcher, University of Oxford
Xiangyu is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, studying the formation of emergent communities under contemporary conditions of hypermobility, fragmented geographies, and pervasive digital connectivity. His work explores how individuals and collectives engage with blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies, examining how participation in these socio-technical ecosystems fundamentally reconfigures prevailing understandings of money, citizenship, territoriality, and sovereignty. Beyond his academic pursuits, he is also a documentary photographer, using visual storytelling to capture how mobility and digitalization are reshaping people’s perceptions of selfhood and collective belonging.
→ Learn more about Xiangyu’s work
Madison Karas
Product Manager in Journalism & Technology
Madison Karas is a product manager in journalism and technology living in Bogotá, Colombia, leading product and research initiatives for independent media organizations. Originally from Minnesota, Madison studied journalism and economics at Temple University and has always been interested in creating interventions that improve people's daily realities. She's researched revenue models and metrics frameworks for startup newsrooms, journalist interview tactics, and an ethnographic study of urban baristas. Madison is excited for this fellowship to bring together economic and media disciplines to research a tax model for a digital nation.
→ Learn more about Madison's work
The 2025 Prompts
- How is trust coded into a society that exists online?
- What marks time and space in a country without land?
- Can beauty bind a borderless people?
- What myths will the founders of a digital nation pass down?
- What do citizens owe an internet-native country?
Applications for the 2026 Plumia Fellowship will open in mid-2026.
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