@npapanastasiou
Research grant consultant helping social science & humanities researchers write outstanding research grants. Posting about all things related to writing research grants. Website: https://outstandingresearchgrants.com
The workshop also included guided interactive writing exercises, giving participants the intellectual space to experiment with different ways of communicating their ideas.
If this workshop might be of interest to your Faculty or research group feel free to reach out!
My workshop aimed to help participants re-visit their unsuccessful proposals through the lens of storytelling in order to identify what strategic changes they can make so that a reviewer can better appreciate their ideas.
Yesterday I enjoyed delivering my online 'Grant Writing as Storytelling' workshop to folks at the Faculty of Social Sciences & Humanities at the University of Liverpool as part of their wider workshop on re-submitting unsuccessful grant proposals.
It is always more complicated to present yourself effectively as a researcher. Narrative CVs are an improvement from cold hard metrics, but they can be difficult to navigate. Very useful initiative and toolkit from my fellow @yai.ie members. Well done👏🏻
#research
In the newsletter I'm sending out to my subscribers tomorrow, I outline common mistakes related to the issue of communicating leadership in grant proposals, and suggest how researchers can avoid these.
To join my newsletter subscribers you can sign up via: outstandingresearchgrants.com/newsletter/
If you're looking for some external support with your upcoming ERC interview feel free to get in touch! I offer specialised support for SH Panel proposals.
Two quick caveats:
1) NEVER contact a member of the review panel (this is against ERC regulations);
2) don't go into your interview with a rigid idea of who will be on the panel; for a range of reasons they may not be there, and it's important you don't feel taken by surprise if that happens.
If you've been recently invited for an ERC StG interview, it might be useful to identify what type of individuals are likely to be on your panel (in terms of their disciplinary background, general approach, etc), so you have a general sense of who will be your audience.
The ERC has made public the panel members who feature in the 2025 ERC Starting Grant peer review process: erc.europa.eu/sites/defaul...
I've supported multiple successful ERC candidates to craft a compelling, memorable presentation narrative, and to practice delivering concise, convincing responses in the Q&A session.
For more information, feel free to email me directly at natalie[at]outstandingresearchgrants.com
Many folks have training sessions with both academic colleagues & ERC grant experts. If you're looking for an external expert to help you prepare for your SH Panel interview, I can help.
Considering applying to multiple research grants? I've just scheduled a newsletter to be sent to my subscribers tomorrow which offers some advice for how you can best navigate this issue.
To receive my newsletters you can subscribe at outstandingresearchgrants.com/newsletter/
With university departmental closures are we seeing the emergence of geographical 'cold spots' for social science/humanities/arts (SHAPE) subjects? We've developed a new beta mapping tool using HESA data to enable you to explore the situation by subject www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...
You can register on my website: outstandingresearchgrants.com/workshops/
The webinar draws on my extensive experience with supporting researchers applying for ERC grants.
And due to my previous experience working in academia, I understand the challenging intellectual processes and writing practices that are involved in crafting a grant proposal.
There are plenty of excellent resources on the official guidelines & requirements of ERC grants.
But it can sometimes feel difficult to know how to bridge this information with your individual grant idea.
My free online webinar gives some key advice on translating your idea into an ERC proposal.
Hello, Bluesky! ☀️
We fund frontier research in Europe—bold ideas, unexpected discoveries and science that shapes the future. So it’s only fitting we’ve landed here. Sorry for being late.
Follow us for updates on ERC funding, research policy, and our grantees' discoveries.
In this way, you can connect the dots for a reviewer, rather than leave it up to them to try to piece together a coherent message from a list of bullet points.
In this way, the narrative CV can hold a lot of potential to work in your favour when explaining your unique career and research profile.
An important focus of crafting a narrative CV is to highlight key research themes that you've developed during your career.
This is especially helpful if your research background has involved conducting research across different disciplines, empirical foci, or theoretical approaches.
Many grants now include a narrative CV as part of their applications.
A narrative CV forces you to tell a concise story about your career, but most of us have trouble knowing how to summarise our career trajectory because it’s so often a very complicated story!
This requires delicate, difficult writing, but I would argue that it’s well worth doing if you want your reviewer to appreciate the importance of your grant idea.
(I sent out a longer reflection about this in my Newsletter today; you can sign up here outstandingresearchgrants.com/newsletter/)
By far the most common issue I see in proposals is that the researcher’s own voice is too weak or completely absent from the s-o-a discussion.
This is problematic, because a reviewer will want to read the s-o-a through your critical lens, rather than through a generic, descriptive narrative.
Many researchers talk about the challenge of compressing a large body of literature into a limited word count when writing the state-of-the-art section of their #research #grant proposal.
However, I very rarely come across a proposal that hasn’t included enough literature in its s-o-a section.
The Austrian Research Agency publishes a list of #ERC applications that you can find online. If you are applying, this can be helpful. If you have received a grant, I would urge you to share yours too:
www.ffg.at/europa/heu/e...
Research grants typically require writing about yourself as part of the application. Most researchers I work with struggle with this & many worry about coming across as arrogant. This Research Whisperer blog offers some excellent tips
researchwhisperer.org/2023/11/14/w... #AcademicSky #Acwri
Are you keen to get started on preparing a research grant application for 2024?
This webinar offers a good place to start thinking about how you can best communicate your research idea to reviewers: outstandingresearchgrants.com/webinar-gran... #AcademicSky #Acwri
The #ERC has released the statistics from this week's Starting Grant Call.
3,474 total applications, 1,029 from Social Sciences & Humanities, nearly 40% of applications from women.
Good luck to all applicants! #ERCStG #AcademicSky #Acwri
erc.europa.eu/news-events/...
Hi fellow bskyers! I'm starting an account here hoping to connect with old and new researcher colleagues and friends (including old Twitter connections). If you don't know me, I'm a research grant consultant who offers training & writing support for researchers in the social sciences and humanities.
