Photo montage of three panel members featuring in the recording

Fellowship Interviews – Panel Insights

This week’s Pop Up IAD was even more of a treat than usual for me as I got to share the stage with two of my fellow roving panel members from the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, Nigel Brown and Samantha Aspinall. After some introductory messages we opened up the session for questions and gave our personal perspectives (happily all consistent!) on the following:

  • whether it’s an issue to have been in the same lab for a long time (if reason is partly nature of research and partly down to career breaks)
  • how to demonstrate independence from your doctoral supervisors and postdoctoral PIs
  • whether to mention previous unsuccessful grant applications
  • how to get recognition on grants
  • how to respond to questions wanting detail about later stages of the plans  of your proposal which are going to be worked out once the research has started
  • whether non-research work is relevant (i.e. public engagement)
  • whether small grants count towards your case for being independent
  • the risk of collaborators looking like the research leaders that you will follow
  • if you should accept good suggestions from reviewers and say you’ll adapt your plans
  • whether to include testimonials (i.e. from student feedback)
  • who to ask for a letter of support

Session Recording

At the moment the recording includes a few glitches which we’ll edit out in the next few days, but I’m aware that some fellowship interviews are happening next week so we’ve decided that this is good enough to get out for the moment.

The slides from the session are here Pop Up Fellowship interview

Remember that the very first Pop Up IAD session (back in March!) was on fellowships as well.

Finally here are a few links from our colleagues at other institutions which may be useful.

Some Fellowship FAQs from Imperial’sPostdoc and Fellows Development Centre

Advice on Fellowships : Although it feels a little odd to point to a post about a travel fellowship at the moment, this blog does a fantastic job of explaining the process you need to follow to write an effective application. And it’s by The Research Whisperer so make sure you have a good look around as the site is full of advice.

Finally, I’m getting a little more organised about getting details of PopUp IAD sessions online in advance, so take a look at those coming up for the rest of May and June. And remember that we’re keen to run the sessions you need so let us know what should come next!

 

 

This training was developed to support our research staff including our Train@Ed cohort of fellows. Train@Ed has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska‐Curie grant agreement No. 801215

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