Research proposals - time and timing

27 August 2010

By Simon Smith

I've had little time to check in on this blog lately, not because I've been away but because I was devoting just about all my time to an application I've made for a Marie Curie Fellowship.

Sarah's angry post mentioned research proposals as one of the many things that distracts researchers, and especially contract researchers, from actually doing research. For the MC Fellowships I reckon you can at least double her estimate of one month for the time you need to set aside to write the thing! 25 pages including a detailed research proposal and a detailed career plan too (you'll be pleased to know I referred extensively to Vitae's Researcher Development Framework for this section). And a huge amount of time and effort to coordinate things with the 'host institution' to which you're proposing to go. All that for a very uncertain return (I'm told the success rate last year was about 20-25%).

Will it be worth it? Well, I'll know in December. But I tried to make sure that the effort will be worth it - regardless of whether I get the Fellowship or not. The research I'm proposing builds on some conference papers I've written in the last year (based on 'unpaid' research, naturally), and tries to take it in the direction I want to head anyway. So just writing the proposal has helped me think through some important theoretical and methodological issues around the topic, which I know I'll be able to make use of regardless.

Secondly, it's been incredibly useful to have to make the contacts with collaborators - other researchers and end-users - to share my ideas with them and hear their input. It's confirmed to me that my ideas have credence, relevance and applicability, and created links that I ought to be able to make use of later, with or without funding. So distracting, yes, but I don't see it as time wasted.

Where it does cause me a dilemma is the timing of the process. Having invested a lot of effort in the proposal, I'm making it my number 1 priority, so all plans between here and December have to be made on the assumption (or the bet) that I get the Fellowship – and then head off to Slovakia for two years next spring.  Given that my last contract ended in June, that leaves me in limbo for rather longer than I'd like. I daren’t apply for jobs, firstly because I don’t think I’d stand much chance if was honest about my plans, and secondly for fear that I’d be offered one, and then having to make a very difficult choice! In that hypothetical situation, the 'sensible' option might seem to be to assume that I won't get the funding

Luckily, I’ve been offered a bit of teaching work at my old department, which will tide me over nicely during the first semester. But if I want to teach in semester 2 as well, I’ll need to tell them before December – or risk that there’s no work left for me. So my dilemma’s only been postponed really.

The Marie Curie Fellowships are all about researcher mobility, but from here to December it’s going to feel like I’m permanently ‘on call’, and that’s a kind of mobility I could do without.