How to apply for a mid-career fellowship
A long time ago, I wrote a blog post on how to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship in ten easy steps . This ended up being quite a popular post (even prompting an interview about the topic on the BJKS podcast ). Things have changed a bit in the 8 years since I wrote that post, and much of that time has been spent worrying about/applying for/starting a mid-career fellowship, and I often find myself discussing the topic with others. So, I thought it would be useful to write another post, this time focusing on mid-career fellowships.
First, a major caveat: I have no idea what I am doing. While I hope some of this advice might be helpful, I am by no means an expert on this topic. I applied for four mid-career fellowships, and was successful with only one (I reached interview stage for 2, and didn’t get shortlisted for the other). While I have suspicions about why some applications were more successful than others, I am not especially confident about what made the difference. And perhaps most significantly, luck plays a major role in these things.
So, here are some thoughts on applying for mid-career fellowships, based on my own experience and those of others I have spoken to, which may or not be helpful.
