Research Funding Toolkit

My colleague Jacqueline Aldridge has collaborated with Prof Andrew Derrington (Executive PVC, Liverpool) to write a brilliant new handbook on how to prepare a successful grant application.

As I'm sure regular readers will know, drafting an application is no walk in the park, and it's easy to take rejection personally. This book gives you practical advice on how to structure and write a proposal so that it has the best chance of success. It offers hints and tips on understanding your audience, helping them to see the importance and urgency of your project, and making sure that your application stands out from the pile.

But enough sales talk. Have a look yourself. There's a sample chapter on the Amazon website, here. Jacqueline and Andrew have also set up a website, complete with blog, here.

The Past Was Yours but the Future's Mine

News came through this week of the appointment of the new AHRC Director of Research. Professor Mark Llewellyn (for it is he), Professor in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde, will take over from Shearer West (Birmingham) who has moved on to be Head of Humanities at Oxford. She, in turn, had taken over from Prof Tony McEnery, who was Professor of English Language & Linguistics at Lancaster. Before them you had Chairs of the Research Committee (John Caughie, Film Studies, Glasgow and John Morrill, History, Cambridge).

So what do we know about Mark Llewellyn? And can his appointment tell us anything about current AHRC thinking? Well, a number of things strike me about his appointment:

• firstly, he's incredibly young to be taking on a senior policy position in the major funder in the sector. Take a look at the fresh faced young prof in the photo above (looking a little like Peter Kay's young brother), and compare it to Morrill, Caughie, and even McEnery and Shearer. The AHRC is obviously backing youth.


• secondly, his rise has been meteoric over the last five years: in 2006-07 he was still plying his trade as a postdoc researcher at Liverpool. From RA to Director of Research at the AHRC in five years: some might say his haste is unseemly. The AHRC is obviously backing ambition.


• thirdly, he's keen on work which stretches out across disciplines. He works in 'neo-Victorianism', which is a fairly broad church (as I understand it), and is currently 'think[ing] about ways in which we still interact with and (re-)imagine the Victorian(s) across a range of discourses.' The AHRC is obviously backing interdisciplinarity.


• finally, he has engaged with the AHRC through the Peer Review College (2007-11), and through being PI on a recent 'Connected Communities' grant. The AHRC is obviously backing engagement.

None of this, of course, is a surprise. But it does indicate that the AHRC recognises the need for energy, dynamism and fresh thinking in these difficult times. Will Llewellyn push the Council to increased interdisciplinary initiatives, and bring in more radical reform that that already suggested in their Delivery Plan? I'll watch with interest.