How to apply for a Fellowship

Your idea

The first step in applying for a Fellowship is to identify the research theme you are interested in and some potential topics that you can explore further. Inspiration may be obtained from discussions with colleagues, peers or through the University of Leicester’s list of research expertise by College and Institutes:

Each department within the University of Leicester also displays research topics and foci, many of these can be found through the University’s Research A-Z.

Selecting a funder

Each Fellowship scheme runs on different processes, including the application windows available. With knowledge of the research topics you are interested in, the next step is to identify a relevant funder. Please also contact the Doctoral College for further support and information.

The important checks to perform here include:

Eligibility criteria (varies per funder)
Alignment with funder strategy
Timeline for the Fellowship process

Preparing the application

To be successful in obtaining a Fellowship, you will need the support of the host organisation and to manage this, the University of Leicester provides support through the Doctoral College. The Doctoral College has processes in place for many schemes and will likely request you complete a template document to help us understand your ambitions and see what further support you require.

To continue with your application, please contact the Doctoral College via doctoralcollege@leicester.ac.uk.

Help and support

To increase the success rate of applications, the University of Leicester uses an internal process to identify perspective candidates to support through the application procedure. Once identified, support for the development of the full proposal can include the following:

One-to-ones

One-to-ones are informal chats about issues relating to your life as a future fellow that you would like to discuss. These can be arranged between existing fellowship holders, senior staff or professional services depending on your requirements.

You may want to use these sessions to discuss your CV, fellowship applications, becoming an academic, development opportunities available to you or anything else you want to discuss.

Please contact the Doctoral College for more details via doctoralcollege@leicester.ac.uk.

Proposal writing

The Doctoral College provides grant proposal writing training as well as mentoring and support for complete development of the applications.

Mock interviews

Whilst the application stage is important, a large proportion of funders use the interview stage to inform funding decisions. As such, preparing for an interview is vital if you want to succeed in obtaining fellowship funding. The University of Leicester can provide a mock interview to help with the preparation for this element. The mock interview panel may contain representatives from the Doctoral College, the host department and the funder group as well as previous fellowship holders.

Please contact the Doctoral College for more details via doctoralcollege@leicester.ac.uk.