Grant Application Writing

Graduate Studies Support Program

This workshop is part of the Graduate Studies Support Program of Berlin University Alliance. For an overview of all Graduate Studies Support Program events, click here.
 
Successful grant proposal writing is a fundamental basis to fund a career in research. There are plenty of national and international funding programmes with different funding schemes. Each scheme has its individual context and thematic focus, eligibility and funding rules, submission and evaluation process, and evaluation criteria. Thus, the detailed features and aspects of a successful proposal in one funding scheme are naturally differing from those of a successful proposal in another funding scheme. However, the process of how to work out these details is a common denominator to the different funding schemes. It requires skills way beyond the ability to work out a research idea in detail.

Objectives
The aim of this course is to familiarize participants with the strategies for designing and writing successful grant/fellowship applications to various funding bodies. It consists of lecture-style sequences with active participation by the audience dealing with extracting the nature of a successful project from official call documents, developing a new idea for a research project into a first work plan, visualising the structure of the project, matching the project to what the reviewers will expect, formulation of objectives, innovative aspects and impact, and budget calculation. Additional information about funding programmes, reviewing processes and funding of academic career will deepen the insights in research project design and writing of grant proposals.

Content

• how to develop your idea for a project into a sound work programme
• how to match it to the requirements of the funding programme and
• how to facilitate the communication with the reviewer by presenting your complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way.
• Besides, you will obtain a lot of background information on different funding programmes, evaluation processes and potential pitfalls.