Wellcome Early Career Awards

There are three calls per year for this scheme with Wellcome deadlines generally in February, May and October. The SPS pathway is currently underway for the February round and closed to new applications. Details for applying for the next round will be advertised in due course.

The Wellcome Trust Early Career Award scheme provides funding for early-career researchers from any discipline who are ready to develop their research identity in fields associated with human life, health and wellbeing. By the end of the award, they will be ready to lead their own independent research programme. Wellcome is seeking to develop a cohort which goes onto to develop, manage and lead creative, independent research programmes within or outside academia or in transferable sectors.

Further information can be found on the Wellcome Trust website: Wellcome Trust - Early-Career Awards

School of Social and Political Science (SPS) internal panel review process

Applicants intending to apply through SPS should be aware that a structured internal review process is in place. This process is designed to ensure that applications are as competitive and well-developed as possible ahead of submission to the funder.

Given the complexity and competitiveness of the scheme, the School’s internal review process begins several months in advance of Wellcome’s deadline.

The first stage of this process is an Expression of Interest, which is outlined below.

1. Mentor Identification
Applicants should be aware that the Wellcome Trust and SPS require a mentor to be appointed for all postdoctoral fellowships. This needs to be a core member of SPS staff. Applicants have the responsibility of first identifying, contacting and securing an agreed mentor for a proposed project application. We strongly encourage all applicants to contact and secure the agreement of a prospective mentor in SPS as soon as possible, as they must work closely with them in developing their application.

2. Notification of Expression of Interest to School

Once you have a mentor in place, you need to let the SPS Research Office know of your intention to apply by email to ssps.research@ed.ac.uk.

3. Submission to SPS School Panel Process

In order to be considered for the School panel process, you must ensure that the following are sent to the SPS Research Office by the School deadline.

Outline project proposal (max. 2 pages)
References/Bibliography (max. 1 page)
Candidate CV (max. 2 pages)
A mentor statement (max. 1 page)
Your mentor must ensure that in principle approval from the Head of Subject Area for your application is emailed to the SPS Research Office before you submit your documents to the School panel process.

Documents should all be in either Calibri or Arial font, size 11, with 2 cm margins.

All documents must be submitted to ssps.research@ed.ac.uk.

Further information on preparing a submission to a School panel can be found here: Preparing a submission to a School panel.

4. Development of application

Applicants who secure School support to proceed with their application will receive feedback on the strength of the proposal to allow progress to the next stage which will involve a draft submission.

Further Information

Further details on the scheme can be found on the Wellcome Trust funding page here:https://wellcome.org/grant-funding/schemes/early-career-awards