6: Application Season (how to apply for postdoctoral fellowships)

In episode six of our podcast (which you can listen to here) we talked about the process of applying for postdoctoral research fellowships. We covered the two main types of research postdocs available in the UK and Europe: 1) 'open-call' fellowships, often called 'Junior Research Fellowships', or 'JRFs' for short (where you apply to a central funding body and pitch them your research idea and 2) the more specific types of jobs, where a project exists, and has a placed an advert for a contributing postdoctoral researcher.

Use this blog as a helpful guide to understanding:

• What types of postdoctoral research jobs exist in UK academia

• What the application process and the timeline looks like for these jobs

• Some of the things you can do to help improve your chances of success

Section 1: Open-call Junior Research Fellowships

The types of organisations that offer funding for JRFs in the UK, include the Levehulme Trust and the British Academy (check the links for more information)

The timeline for most open-call fellowships begins around September-December. Typically, the process looks like this:

• You need to find a host institution that welcomes open-call JRFs: most places that welcome applications will place adverts on places like www.jobs.ac.uk in the Autumn (if you are reading this well in advance of applying, it is a good idea to make your own list of institutions who may be interested in hosting applicants for next year).

• Make contact with this potential host institution and apply to be a JRF candidate. You will be asked to submit an initial research proposal, and you will probably be asked to identify a 'mentor', who will be an academic tasked with supervising the project. Often, this mentor will help you to develop your application, so it is a good idea to make contact with them first, to assess the likelihood of their interest and the interest of the host institution.

• If selected by the host institution, they will then help you to apply to the funding body: there is no interview process by the funding body, and the application is assessed only on the research proposal and supporting documents.

• The deadline for submitting to the funding body is usually around the Spring, with wards announced in the Summer to begin work in the Autumn.

It is worth bearing in mind how long this process can take: up to a year, from first call, to finally beginning a project!

As with our discussion on applying for PhD (in podcast 2) it is a good idea to think carefully about your potential host institution. Try to find somewhere that already has the subject expertise and facilities you might need (like Library resources, humanities kids!) and somewhere which feels good, from your discussions with the possible mentor/supervisor and the administration. If you live close enough to actually visit, then this is also a good idea (and if not, try Google maps!)

Don't forget that you can apply to multiple potential host institutions! You only have to finalise your one choice at the point of actually applying. So shop around.

Also remember that some universities have better track records than others, some provide more support than others, or have larger, better-funded research support departments who offer more services to fellowship candidates.

Aside from these larger open calls, some research centres run their own specific postdoc searchers. The Centre for History and Economics at Cambridge usually offers 3-year fellowships (https://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/fellowship2023/ad.html) while the Marie Curie Foundation also run postdoctoral competitions. Another really popular scheme is the Teach at Tübingen scheme, where you design courses relating to your research (in English) at a German university.

We also spent some time discussing the Cambridge and Oxford Junior Research Fellowships schemes (JRFs). Many of the colleges offer JR funding in specific subject areas. all have very specific application deadlines and highly specific criteria, so it is worth checking the individual College websites to see what they offer and when.

There are a number of helpful blogs out there from people who have held JRFs about advice that relates specifically to the Oxbridge system (e.g. see modern historian Laura Tisdall’s helpful blogs, especially about the interview process: https://drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/interviews-part-one-junior-research-fellowships-jrfs/) also: https://itsallgreektoanna.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/some-advice-on-applying-to-junior-research-fellowships/

Some General advice for open-call proposals:

• Make sure your proposal is accessible to an academic in any discipline, as most open-call fellowships are often open to a range of disciplines. This means that the group of people assessing your proposal will have very different backgrounds. They will not be an expert! They may know nothing about your discipline, let alone your sub-discipline. Don’t assume any prior knowledge. If you are lucky enough to have someone from your discipline on your board, it is a very slim chance that they will know about your sub-discipline too, so the advice still stands. 

• Bear in mind that the process is super competitive! Leverhulme applications typically run at about a 17-25% success rate of those who get to the final stage of applying (i.e., those who are selected by the host institution) whereas British Academy postdocs typically run at less than 10% of all those who get to the final stage.

Section two: job-specific research positions

Typically, then Principal Investigators (PIs) apply for large research grants, they will often apply for money to pay for the salaries of postdoctoral researchers and PhD students, whose work contributes to the project.

Adverts for these types of jobs can be placed at any time, so keep any eye on www.jobs.ac.uk and sign up for email alerts for jobs in your field.

Employers will typically give quite a detailed job advert, outlining the specific skills and knowledge that their preferred candidates should possess. You should spend time looking at their application in which carefully, to work out ways in which you fit the brief.

You will be asked to submit a CV and a covering letter, attend an interview (if successful to that stage) and in some cases, you may need to take a skills test.

Your previous work does not have to be an exact fit to their current project, but the employers will want to know how your current skills and experiences fit their aims.

Top tips:

• Study the person specification carefully

• Make sure your application shows evidence for all the 'essential' criteria

• Show evidence of meeting the criteria (i.e., 'my PhD chapter 6 featured heavy use of GIS mapping software', if that's what they're looking for etc.)

• email the PI in advance to ask questions! This will help you to understand exactly what they may be looking for, and most PIs will love the chance to talk some more about their work.

Conclusions:

Applying for postdoctoral research jobs can be hugely time consuming, stressful, and in the end, it may not end in 'success'. But success can mean several things: in our podcast, Charlie talked about not getting any of these postdocs, but coming out the end of the applications with a really tight proposal for research, which then when implemented, helped him a lot in the early stages of his lecturing career.

Good luck!

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