Fellowships

School of Physical Sciences: Fellowship Candidates 2024/25

The School of Physical Sciences, Open University, actively encourages and supports internal and external candidates, from early career researchers, to established career staff, in applying for fellowships to support them undertaking research (or other) fellowship activities within our School.

We are currently soliciting interest from potential fellowship candidates (both internal and external to the OU) for early-career, independent and senior fellowships, and kindly request those with an interest in applying for fellowships in the 2024/25 academic year, hosted at the Open University, to complete the expression of interest (EOI) form, publication list and a short 2 page CV, and return them to STEM-SPS-HOS@open.ac.uk by 12 noon on Tuesday 10th September 2024. We are particularly interested to hear from potential STFC ERF candidates, and other 5-year independent fellowship candidates e.g. EPSRC Open,  as well as ERC Starter and Royal Society Candidates. 

Before completing the form, we actively encourage you to discover our wide-ranging and internationally-leading research, outreach and knowledge exchange activities, (https://www.open.ac.uk/science/physical-science/) and discuss your potential project with our staff by email and / or over video conferencing. If you are not sure whom to talk to, our Director of Research (Dr Helen Fraser) is on hand to help you (STEM-SPS-DOR@open.ac.uk). You must have secured the support / mentorship of an academic faculty member in the School prior to submitting your EOI.

We have a strong record of mentoring and supporting individuals to securing a wide range of fellowships, and supporting these fellows onwards in their permanent academic careers, within the OU and beyond. We also positively encourage career-break returners to apply for fellowships, and always encourage all individuals meeting the specific criteria of a scheme, irrespective of background, to be considered for fellowships.

It is important to know that an expression of interest does not necessarily mean we will be able to support your application. To ensure submission of high quality, competitive proposals, the School runs an internal selection process for all fellowship applications. Fellowship applicants are selected on the basis of likely success in highly competitive schemes, strategic match with OU research / business interests, and where individuals can demonstrate attributes that are well matched to the scheme that they are applying to. For some fellowships, a demand management system is in place, and candidates will be selected based on the expression of interest information (and CV) provided, which may be followed up by informal discussions (in person or via video link) prior to any final decisions being communicated: this can occur at School and University level. We will always provide you with our feedback; selected candidates will be offered mentoring and support throughout the application process, including mock interviews and proposal reviews. If we don’t feel you are ready for a fellowship application yet, then we will offer some advice to enable you to return to us in the future.

We look forward to hearing from you, answering your questions, and look forward to your expression of interest, leading to successful fellowship applications in 2024/25.

Dr Helen Fraser (Director of Research, School of Physical Sciences).