At the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, we welcome Fellows from all around the world and at all career stages, from postdocs to professors emeritus/emerita. People often ask about our application process and what our reviewers are looking for in an application, so we're sharing some of the key aspects that our selection panels have highlighted over the years. Our latest podcast (16 minutes) is aimed at postdoctoral researchers who are planning to apply to IASH, but is hopefully of interest to anyone considering a Fellowship.
We would like to thank everyone involved in making this episode possible:
Writer and presenter - Ben Fletcher-Watson
Recording and Editing - Lauren Galligan
Branding - Lucien Staddon Foster
Series Production - Ben Fletcher-Watson
Theme music composed and performed by Saber Bamatraf. Please visit https://soundcloud.com/saber-bamatraf to hear more of his music.
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to this special podcast from the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, known as IASH. I’m Ben Fletcher-Watson.
At IASH, we host around 60 researchers each year from all around the world and at all career stages, from recent PhD graduates to senior academics. People often ask about our application process and what we’re looking for in an application, so I thought I’d share some of the things that our selection panels have highlighted over the years. This is especially aimed at postdoctoral researchers, but hopefully of interest to all.
To give some context, here are the most frequently asked questions from potential applicants:
Can I apply to IASH if I don’t have a PhD?
We do not currently support doctoral or undergraduate research. A few of our programmes – mainly those for artists, writers and playwrights, such as the IASH-Traverse Creative Fellowship and the Community Fellowship – are aimed at people who do not have a PhD. However, the majority of our Fellowships require applicants to hold a doctorate, or to be able to provide a letter of completion / eligibility to graduate as part of an application, if you have not yet graduated; you do not need to have actually graduated at the time you apply. However, we are open to applications from people without PhDs if there is strong evidence of sustained engagement with research as part of artistic practice, activism, community development, etc. In these circumstances, it would be advisable to contact us in advance of making an application to discuss options.
Can I apply to IASH if my work is in the sciences?
If your research falls wholly within natural science, engineering or medicine, you would not be eligible to apply. IASH is primarily concerned with research in the arts, humanities and social sciences, but we strongly welcome interdisciplinary applications in areas such as medical humanities.
Can I apply to IASH if I am an independent researcher?
Yes. In most cases, we do not require applicants to hold a current position at a university or research centre.
Can I apply for more than one Fellowship?
Applicants are welcome to apply for more than one Fellowship, although they should ensure that each application is tailored to a specific programme. For example, an early-career researcher working in 18th-century history may wish to apply for the Daiches-Manning Memorial Fellowship in 18th-Century Scottish Studies as well as the Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellowship if they have a second project proposal that involves a significant proportion of digital engagement. Applications for the same project cannot be submitted to more than one programme.
Early-career applicants should note that competition for IASH Postdoctoral Fellowships is intense, with upwards of 200 applications received annually. We also offer targeted postdoctoral opportunities in a number of disciplines (such as digital scholarship, contemporary Islam and Muslim culture, public theology or history), and applicants may prefer to apply for these if appropriate. Where an application to a specific postdoctoral scheme is unsuccessful, it will then be considered again as part of the general pool of Postdoctoral Fellowships – you do not need to make a separate application.
Do I need a mentor or collaborator from the University of Edinburgh?
Yes. This is a key criterion for the selection panel, as it provides evidence of prior contact with colleagues here at Edinburgh, and evidence of a good fit to the university’s research priorities. A second mentor outside the University of Edinburgh is very welcome, but you must list at least one named mentor or collaborator in your application.
Do I need to submit references?
Yes. Almost all Fellowship applications require two (or in some cases, three) academic references. These must be supplied to us by the closing date for applications – we will not contact referees, as it is the applicant’s responsibility to arrange timely submission. Applications without two references will be deemed ineligible. It is preferable for references to comment in detail on the proposed research project, rather than offer general statements about a candidate’s quality. You do not need to supply a reference from a member of staff at Edinburgh, but it can very much help, as it provides evidence of contact with research colleagues here.
When do I become eligible / ineligible for the postdoctoral Fellowship schemes?
This varies across our many postdoctoral schemes, but the range is between 3 and 7 years post-PhD. In all cases, applicants should have been awarded a doctorate at the time of application (i.e. if applying for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2023, you should have been awarded your doctorate between April 2020 and April 2023, although earlier graduates may be eligible if they have taken significant career breaks since completing their doctorate. If you have taken parental leave or other time away from academia, this will not count towards the relevant time limit, but we do ask that you provide brief details of why and for how long you were not working. You should not have held a permanent position at a university, or a previous Fellowship at IASH. If you’ve had a temporary and/or short-term appointment such as a Teaching Fellowship, you are still eligible to apply.
Is it possible to apply to conduct fieldwork or archival visits during a Fellowship?
In most cases, we would expect Fellows to have conducted most of their data collection, fieldwork or international visits before arriving at IASH. A short trip such as visiting an archive in the UK or Europe would not pose any issues, but a lengthy visit to another country during a Fellowship is unlikely to be viewed favourably in an application; the point of an IASH visit is to be a part of our community. On the other hand, data collection in the local area, along with visits to Edinburgh’s many libraries and archives, is very much welcomed. In addition, we actively encourage Fellows to attend conferences and symposia during their time with us, as dissemination of findings and networking are key parts of academic career development.
So, with those common queries out of the way, we’ll move onto perhaps the most important question: what does IASH look for in a successful application?
The answer is complex – the Institute serves all twelve schools within the College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, so we always want to ensure a diverse spread of Fellows across the widest possible range of subject areas and topics. IASH has been known especially for work on the Scottish Enlightenment, but our community of scholars is at its strongest when there’s a rich mix of backgrounds, methods and projects. This means that even the strongest project which fits IASH perfectly may not be successful in a given year, because we are focusing on the makeup of the cohort as well as individual quality. But having said that, a good project is always very appealing!
The three areas that the selection panel considers are:
- Quality of the applicant
- Quality of the project
- Fit to IASH and the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Taking each in turn, we’ll start with quality of applicant. We ask for a CV because we want to know about your doctoral degree, your publications and your experience with knowledge exchange, outreach, research dissemination and so on. We’re less interested in teaching experience, as teaching isn’t part of our Fellowships.
I said earlier that you need to have completed your doctoral studies by the time of application, but we don’t need you to have several years of postdoctoral work under your belt. Just as we want a mix of research disciplines, we also want a mix of career stages, including people who have only just graduated alongside more established scholars. Where you got your PhD doesn’t matter – we don’t prioritise Edinburgh, or any other specific university – but we do want to know that you were able to complete a doctoral thesis successfully – this shows us that you are likely to succeed with a new discrete project while at IASH.
One common pitfall for applicants is to lean too heavily on their thesis or previous supervisors in their application, for example, by seeking to conduct research that is too similar, or to continue working with the same team who supported their PhD. We look for new ideas that show how you can apply your skills in novel areas, and how you plan to build your networks as your career develops. It’s absolutely fine to write a proposal to develop your thesis into a monograph if that’s what you want to do – several Fellows each year will do this – but we don’t want to see minor tweaks to a pre-existing project, or iterations of something you’ve already done. Institutes like IASH are designed to help you pursue something new, whether it’s your first book or data collection for a new study or accessing a new archive or turning your research into a series of workshops. Similarly, we want to see how you plan to widen your links beyond your supervisors – who at Edinburgh can help you develop? Which staff will act as mentors, collaborators or advisors to further your career goals?
Thinking about publications, applicants often ask How many publications should I have by the time I apply? Again, there’s no fixed number we’re looking for. In some disciplines like Art History, applicants may only have one paper, since monographs tend to be more prominent; in other fields like the social sciences, applicants can have many co-authored papers by the time of graduation. While we don’t have a set number, we do expect to see evidence of at least one good-quality peer-reviewed publication in press, as this is the evidence that you are engaged with academic publishing and have a record of producing work in appropriate forms.
Applicants sometimes include long lists of papers “in preparation” – to be honest, we tend to ignore these, as there’s no way of telling if it’s a finished manuscript or just a title on an blank Word document! Similarly, we tend to skip over lists of book reviews. However, if you’ve published in public-facing media, such as well-known blogs, magazines or industry journals, or made podcasts or even short films, that is very useful for the panel to know – it shows us that you can translate your research into different media and make it accessible to a general readership. If you already have a book contract or a letter of intention to publish from a reputable publisher, we recommend mentioning that, as it really strengthens your application – a clear route to publication is very important.
As I just said, we’re interested in your experience beyond research and publishing – from podcasts to workshops, exhibitions to concerts and performances, symposia to radio or TV interviews: all of these show your engagement with the world beyond academia. You should consider creating a separate section of your CV that highlights these areas.
Now, let’s look at what we mean by quality of project.
Interdisciplinarity is the first aspect of what we look for in an application. While we occasionally host Fellows working on relatively narrow disciplinary topics – a single eighteenth century author, for example, or a particular area of philosophy – we are almost always likely to rank an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary project more highly. Institutes of Advanced Study are inherently interdisciplinary places, putting people from very different worlds together to see what new ideas can result. Therefore, a project blending two or more fields, or bringing insights from disparate areas, will always appeal to our panel. Some proposals, like in the medical humanities, do this very easily; others may need to carefully craft their applications to emphasise how they move beyond the bounds of their traditional area to encompass novel ideas, methods or theoretical frameworks. An application that clearly lays out links across more than one school or department and names key colleagues who will act as collaborators will score highly.
I’ve reviewed more than 1,800 applications since I began working at IASH, and every one is different. Nonetheless there are a few lessons I’ve learned along the way:
Make sure your proposal is accessible. You are writing for a panel made up of staff from across the College, many of whom will know little or nothing about your topic or even your discipline. Even if a panel member is in your own discipline, you cannot or should not assume that they are fully knowledgeable about your own specialized topic. Indeed, even specialists need convincing, and may in fact view your proposal with a more critical eye. The safest course is to provide enough background in making your argument, so that both generalists and specialists will view the background as a necessary and logical part of your proposal. It is also wise to avoid jargon or unnecessary technical terms. In my experience, philosophers and legal scholars can suffer most in this area, as they tend to rely on discipline-specific terms that can be hard to understand.
It is obvious that the research question being addressed should be of significance but this is not the only criterion that is used. The application itself must be of high quality, stating the problems clearly and using published evidence intelligently to support its cause. The proposal must be realistic, especially in terms of being achievable with the resources requested – you only have 10 months maximum, for example, so don’t plan a project lasting longer than that!
This is the kind of checklist that our reviewers use when reading applications and gives an indication of how failings would lead to rejection:
Does the background material adequately summarise the current state of knowledge? Does it indicate where the current project fits into prior research programmes? Does it indicate a logical progression? Does it show a clear understanding of relevant literature in the field?
Is the project ethical and if necessary has ethics approval been obtained?
Does the applicant have a good past record of papers published and projects completed?
Is it clearly stated who will benefit from the research and in what way?
Is there a clear fit to the University of Edinburgh? Does the proposal show why IASH is the best place to conduct this research?
This last question is really important – the fit to IASH and the University of Edinburgh. Many projects fall at this final hurdle, as they don’t provide enough evidence as to why their work needs to be carried out here. For example, if you want to visit a London-based archive during your Fellowship, we need very strong evidence of links to staff or resources in Edinburgh that will help you make sense of the new material. Equally, if you have an idea for a brand-new project that seems better–placed at another institute, such as in Europe or elsewhere in the UK, the panel will be looking for justification – why Edinburgh? Why not Paris, Cape Town or New York?
You can find details online of the research themes for our College, from future cities to identities & inequalities. The strongest applications make careful note of where their research links to one or more themes, backing it up with evidence of contact with relevant staff at Edinburgh.
There are many different factors that contribute to an application’s success, but I hope that this overview has helped you as you consider applying to us. Best of luck and thanks for listening.
This podcast was presented by me, Ben Fletcher-Watson, and produced by Lauren Galligan for the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. We would like to offer a very special thank you to Saber Bamatraf for composing and performing our fantastic intro music. You can find a link to his music in the episode description.
Please visit our website at www.iash.ed.ac.uk to find out more about all our Fellowship programmes.