Applying for Research Fellowships
Welcome! The Department of Earth Sciences is keen to encourage and support potential research fellowship applicants and this is a great place to start.
Applying for independent research fellowships can seem like an intimidating process, but we here to help and support you through it.
The key to successful proposal writing is allowing enough time to develop ideas and work through several proposal drafts, acting on feedback. Therefore, to help applicants prepare high quality, competitive proposals, the Department requires that all fellowship applications are made with the input of at least one member of academic staff (a mentor) in a relevant area. Ideally you should contact a member of staff at least 4 months before the deadline of your preferred fellowship program (see out Tips and Guidance and Fellowship Schemes pages for more details; it is highly likely you will be able to use the same proposal idea for several different schemes) and send that member of staff a rough idea of your proposed research project and a CV. With this information that member of staff can work with you to identify the best programs to target and suitable application strategies.
Once you have identified a member of staff to work with and specific fellowship funding calls you would like to apply to, you should send an expression of interest (EOI) to our Research Administrator detailing the program you want to apply to and attaching your CV so we can double-check your fit to the eligibility criteria. Our scheme-specific pages provide indicative deadlines for each fellowship scheme; note these are for schemes that run annually so the exact deadline will vary slightly year on year. You will need to visit the webpage of each scheme to double check funder deadlines and changes in eligibility criteria or application process. Internal deadlines (Department and University Research Office) are usually at five working days in advance of the funder deadlines.
Read a break-down of the application process on our Fellowship Tips and Guidance page.