How to Leverage Professional Experience in Academic Funding Applications
This training is open to all Social Sciences graduate students of the three GUDTP universities.
Academic funding bodies increasingly value professional experience outside academia, with early career researchers in particular being encouraged to dip in and out of industry throughout their career. At doctoral level, the ESRC expects funded students to undertake 3-month placements as part of their studentship and specifically stipulates that these placements are to be completely unrelated to the students' doctorates. The headlines focus on the need to improve employability of doctoral students, in case they choose to pursue a career outside academia, as they often do. But this is only part of the picture. Professional experience, within or beyond academia, is equally useful to those aspiring to a research career within Higher Education and can meaningfully contribute to one’s academic progression.
This training will show you how professional experience can enable good research and how you can use it to make a strong case at the stage of application for funding. Using an overview of popular academic funds as a starting point we will discuss how funders identify academics who are able to operate in interdisciplinary, collaborative, and challenge-led environments, while fostering collaborative, ethical, and supportive research culture. We will discuss narrative CVs and how they can help you demonstrate that your personal qualities and professional skills, as well as your project's goals, mission, and methods closely match the funder’s values and strategic priorities.
This session will be delivered by Dr Sarah Mallet, Research Facilitator at the Social Sciences Division, University of Oxford. We will be joined by Dr Felipe Krause, Departmental Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Oxford, who will discuss how his experience beyond academia helped his academic progression. After the end of the session, GUDTP-funded students will have the opportunity to discuss their placement plans and how they can align them to their academic progession with Katerina Vavaliou, ESRC GUDTP Research in Practice and Placements Coordinator, in an informal setting.
Contact details: If you have any questions about this event please contact placements.gudtp@socsci.ox.ac.uk.
Please only register if you are certain of your availability and commitment to attend.
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