Grants Factory: Responding to Reviewers' Comments

We’re currently putting together the Grants Factory programme for the forthcoming year. One of the first events will look at the thorny issue of Responding to Reviewers’ Comments. Most of the Research Councils (and some other funders) allow you to respond to the comments that their reviewers give your application. Often the comments seem uninformed, and it’s easy – and tempting ! – to respond quickly and angrily to these. However, there is a knack to dealing with them effectively, and if you can master this you can turn round the negative feedback and actually get your applications funded.

The workshop will take place at 2pm on 14 September 2011 and will be led by Dr Peter Bennett from the Durrell Institute of Conservation Ecology (DICE). He has had considerable experience as both an applicant, reviewer and panel member for NERC, as well as a number of other funders. His insight and advice will be relevant to academics in all three faculties, as there are common themes that apply to funders in all disciplines.

The event is free and open to all staff. Do let me know if you would like to come along.

Bonfire of the Quangos: Funding up in Flames?

I always thought that bonfires were meant to create light rather than darkness, but reading commentators yesterday after the government's announcement of the 'bonfire of the quangos', it feels like this one is throwing out nothing but gloom. Research Fortnight has reported that health and environment quangos are particularly badly hit. One that will affect us at Kent is the Defra's Darwin Advisory Committee, which distributes funding for the Darwin Initiative. Kent's done particularly well with these over the last few years, as it fits squarely with the work being done in the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology, which often focuses on biodiversity in the developing world.
The detail is all still to be confirmed, but the announcement, together with the speculation that has followed, has done nothing to lift the pessimism that's rife in research funding at the moment.