The decline of the humanities in recent years triggered by falling enrollment numbers and coupled with pandemic-induced budget crunches have ushered in various forms of economic precarity for graduate students across North America, Europe, and beyond. The importance of securing funding to finish a dissertation, a master’s thesis, and miscellaneous short-term and long-term research projects cannot, therefore, be overstated for graduate students across the board. As such, this GSC-sponsored roundtable will attempt to answer some pressing questions about mastering grant-writing and fellowship-application writing, a genre of academic writing about which graduate students often receive very little formal training at a departmental level. Additionally, this roundtable will offer a robust discussion on strategies and best practices for preparing a grant proposal, a research statement, and other required components of a fellowship application proposal, timelines for drafting and revision among other things. We believe this session will not only be helpful for graduate students just starting to navigate fellowship application processes for governmental, non-governmental, and nonprofit organizations, but also offer a primer for late-stage PhD students looking to transition into a grant-writing career in industry or non-profits after graduation.

We highly encourage proposals from graduate students at all stages of their career, early career researchers (ECR), contingent, TT, and tenured faculty, who have secured major grant funding or fellowship funding either within or beyond their academic institutions. We also welcome abstracts from PhDs working as grant/proposal writers in industry or non-profit organizations and faculty members who review grant/fellowship applications on a regular basis. We invite abstracts of around 200-250 words accompanied by a bio of at most 100 words.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Figuring out a grant/fellowship that is a fit for a specific area of study/research

Internal vs external grant applications

Dissertation completion fellowships - do’s & don’ts

Grant opportunities for Contingent Faculty

Timelines for drafting, soliciting feedback, and revision

Communicating a niche research area to a non-specialist audience

University resources for grant writing applications

Differences in grant writing for academia & industry

Translating successful academic fellowship applications into an industry resume

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Please send questions/thoughts at gsc@nemla.org

URL for the abstract submission: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20446