An essential element of a grant application is your description of yourself. How people describe themselves differs markedly across cultures and depends on their audience. You won’t know exactly who will read your application and there will be different audiences through the application process, but you may be able to understand their cultural biases in […] … learn more→

Around the world, lots of researchers are currently at home, during a crisis, trying to work (as Parks Canada management so aptly said). The Australian Research Council, along with many other funding agencies, have released guidelines on responding to the impact of COVID-19 in grant applications (here is a UK version – 104 Kb PDF). I’d like to expand on their […] … learn more→

In the past 18 months, I have spent more time on research grant applications than I have on actual research. Like so many others, I am trapped in a paradox. To produce high-quality publications, we need to be supported by a grant, but in order to win the grant we need a solid publication record […] … learn more→

Do you share your grant applications with people? Writing an application from scratch is hard work. It is particularly hard when you haven’t done it before. That might be because you have never applied for a grant before. Thankfully, that only happens once. More likely, it is because you’ve never applied for a particular grant […] … learn more→