All our Courses

Featured Course: Our funding Masterclass, 5 weeks to a compelling grant proposal, is an extended course, particularly aimed at Early Career Researchers (ECRs) or those unfamiliar with the UK research funding environment and is now open for expressions of interest!  For the first time ever we’re offering participation to individual ECR researchers from all over the UK rather than having to wait for your Research Office to sign up to one of our single HEI courses!

The course consists of 5 sessions and is equally applicable to those looking to make a research grant or an individual fellowship application.  The sessions are 3 hours long and run at the same time each week (except the 1:1 bookable slots and the longer group pitching/interviewing sessions):

• Week 1: Creativity. Our 3 step creativity process will enable you to come up with the very best research ideas that you can, strengthen those further and then prioritise which you will use as a model application for the rest of the course.  Even if you start the course with project/fellowship ideas this session will enable you to evaluate those more deeply, making them as strong as possible before transforming one into a compelling grant application.
• Week 2: Applications Masterclass Part 1: deconstructing the idea. We will use a range of different “lenses” to enable you to explore ways in which to make your grant application as compelling as possible.
• Week 3: Applications Masterclass Part 2: reconstructing the idea. We will build on the previous sessions by building the idea back up to a full and compelling narrative; enabling you to convey the very strongest elements of the proposal.  We will also examine how to make it easier for reviewers to score the proposal highly and how to examine your work from various perspectives as you seek to enhance how the merits of the proposal are communicated.
• Week 4: 1:1 bookable slots; approximately 15 minutes with the course leader solely focused on exploring any issues specific to your proposal, get 1:1 advice, etc.
• Week 5: Pitching and interviewing. During this session participants will gain new perspectives by “sitting on both sides of the table” i.e. you will have a chance to present your work and be questioned by others as well as being an interviewer. This is an experience, which ECRs in particular, routinely cite as being instrumental in fast tracking their own grant writing craft.  Sessions will need to take place throughout a whole day to accommodate everyone. Participants will only be required to attend for one of these sub-sessions but will be very welcome to maximise their learning by attending as an “observer” during other sessions.

Our current course cohorts are FULL so please express your interest in our future dates using the form below. We will attempt to set session times when the majority of prospective participants are available so please indicate your optimal day/time slots on the form.

All sessions will be held via Zoom, enabling you to get the benefits of live interaction with the course tutor and peers without any of the travel hassle or needing to install additional software (Zoom meetings are accessible from all browsers). 

We regularly review all expressions of interest forms received to ensure a suitable mix of topic interests and no conflicts of interest with other participants within each student cohort.  For example, unless specifically requested we will NOT allow participants within the same cohort who may find themselves in direct competition with each other i.e. because their respective research topics are the same!  Once we have reviewed all EoIs and  developed a suitable mix of participants we will confirm your invite via email.  At that time we will also send the full course joining instructions, including Ts&Cs, code of conduct for participants, etc. You will then need to confirm your participation either by paying the appropriate fee or ensuring that your institution issues a purchase order to our finance team no later than two weeks before the course starts.  Full details will be sent within the place offer documentation.  If payment/purchase orders are not received by the deadline we will offer your place (without any further notice) to the 1st reserve.

When reviewing the pre-course offer please make sure that you can attend all sessions; we will work to ensure everyone can be interviewed during the final week; if there is excess demand for a particular time slot we will open up time slots on other days OR offer you a 1:1 interview with our course leader. The power of our courses is that they are highly interactive ; they are not lectures and as such they will NOT be recorded.  

The course fee is £950 per participant inclusive of all taxes, etc. The fee is fully refundable where required by law e.g. if we cannot fulfil our obligations as laid out above & in our course handbook but NOT where you have simply changed your mind or become unavailable, regardless of reason.  If you do become unavailable after payment has been made but before the sessions start and a reserve from our list is able to take your place then we will defer your participation to a later course without any additional admin fees, etc.