Feminist post-grad, post-doc funding

If, like me, you're beginning to wonder what the future holds, you might be looking for funding in 2010. Finding funding to do any kind of a feminist-based, woman-based project can be incredibly difficult, particularly if you're doing philosophy in the UK.


I was excited to discover that the Leverhulme trust granted a Major Research Award to Madawi Al-Rasheed at KCL for the project 'A Masculine State: gender, religion and politics in Saudi Arabia. Check out the proposal here: http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/Awards_in_Focus/Al-Rasheed/

I was also excited to see that the ARHC has awarded a Research Project Award to the project 'A History of Television for Women in Britain: 1947-1989 to three researches at Warwick. The project is detailed here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/researchnews/history_of_television_for_women_in_britain/

Both of these projects give me a glimmer of hope that it is possible to do studies about women in the current academic environment in the UK and to get them funded. Now, if you're scrambling for a post-doc position next year, you might just be out of luck. Most deadlines to apply have come to pass. There are, however, two that I know of coming up next week.

Post-doc

- King's College London's Arts and Humanities Dept has a number of Early Career Fellowships on offer. The deadline is 19 Feb 2009. Who can apply is up to the individual schools in the department (and some of the schools don't even mention they have the Leverhulme opportunity) so get in contact quickly.

- Oxford also has four Leverhulme fellowships on offer. One in Classics, One in History and two in English. The deadline is the 15th of Feb and you've got to go through a lot of hoops to meet that one, so hurry: http://www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/research/applying_from_outside_oxford/leverhulme_early_career_fellowships/leverhulme_ecf_application_process
The rule of thumb for post-doc funding is that you must plan to apply before November the year before you want to start.

Post-grad
As far as post-grad funding goes, the AHRC offers plenty of funding across the UK to UK residents and citizens. Also the OSRAS is great for international students.

- Warwick is a good place to go to do feminist-based studies and they have an easy to understand funding website. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/academicoffice/gsp/scholarship/funding/phd

- Middlesex is a good place to go if you want to do continental philosophy, though they give hardly any information about funding on their website. Best to get in touch: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/fees_funding/scholarships/index.aspx

- The Philosophy Department at the University of Liverpool is headed by Gillian Howie. She has been consistently involved in feminist philosophy and is a board member of SWIP UK. In other words, she's awesome. The University has a great Funding Search application that you can find here: http://www.liv.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/finance/scholarships.htm

- And finally, the Philosophy Department at the University of Dundee is also great for feminist philosophy. Johanna Oksala heads the department and lists feminist philosophy in her research interests. The school's funding page is listed here: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/philosophy/postgrad/pgguideapplicants.htm#fees