Writing a grant application as a PhD student; reflections, advice, and grievances

Author: Sam Parsons

How not to write a grant application, courtesy of It’s Always Sunny; “Give me money. Money me. Money now. Me a money needing a lot now.”

note 1; an early version of this post appears on my blog here.

note 2; this is a long post. Grab a drink, settle in. If you dont have the time save it for later, possibly with beer.

In May 2017, I submitted a grant application to the ESRC with my DPhil supervisor. It was an uphill struggle from the beginning, and the last week was a flurry of activity between my supervisor and I to make the revisions that were much needed to polish the application. At the time of writing the last version of this post, I was waiting with my fingers crossed that “our efforts will not succumb to the ~90% likelihood that we will not receive funding”, or more positively, that our application would be successful. The application was moved from our intended grant application review meeting around July, to one in November. This clearly spoiled my plans of hopefully starting with the project in October. In the end, things worked out with a postdoc position in the mean time. To be honest, by the time December hit, I wasn’t even considering the possibility that the application would have been approved. So, when I got a phone call to let me know that we have the grant I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I’m very happy that the application was successful, and am also excited to start the project.

Read more here