My experience of applying for Leverhulme EC fellowship

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What is Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship?

Leverhulme Early Career research fellowship is for early career researchers, with a research record but who have not yet held a full-time permanent academic post, to undertake a significant piece of publishable work. Normally the fellowship is up to three years.

More details can be found here.

My application timeline

The application is quite a "long" but definitely a worthwhile journey for me. For anyone interested in applying for this fellowship, I would like to share my application timelines here for your reference.

• 15 Oct 2020: Prepare to start my application

• 19 Nov 2020: Submit my draft research proposal to Bartlett School of Planning, UCL

• 2 Dec 2020: Receive the comment and feedback from school (I would say this is the first round selection. Only the school is happy to support applicant going forward, the candidate then could move to the next step.

• 8 Feb 2021: Submit my official application form.

• 19 May 2021: Receive the result from Leverhulme.

Some experiences: Several Dos and DON'Ts

First I would like to highlight that the following suggestions may not be 100% correct for your case, but I do find them useful for helping me develop my research proposal and application form.

(images from https://probella.com/blog/the-dos-and-donts-for-managing-your-online-reputation-in-business/)

DOs

• Do ask advices and help from your potential mentors while preparing for you application.

• Do ask people outside your research background to read the research proposal and see some parts of the proposal are unclear.

• Do read the application guidance again and again. Check the draft carefully to ensure that the research plan covers all the required elements and is consistent with the guidelines.

• Do plan in advance, so that you will more time to review, revise and prepare other stuffs such as expenses plan.

DON'Ts

• Don't be afraid of rejection, whether it's from a fund, or from a mentor or referee.

• Don't procrastinate the schedule.

(to be continued...)