Divisional advice and guidance on Fell Fund proposals

  1. Give yourself plenty of time to prepare.
  2. Read all guidance carefully and ensure your proposal meets the Fell Fund criteria.
  3. Discuss your application with others (colleagues, Head of Department, Departmental Administrator or departmental research contact (pdf), as appropriate).
  4. Costings: Ask your department, in good time, to draw up costings for the elements of the project, guided by your outline of the project's requirements. There are some restrictions on what the Fell Fund will provide funding for, please ensure you check the Fell Fund guidance carefully.
  5. Suggestions for completing a proposal:
    • Ensure you provide the information required, preferably under the headings given in the University Fell Fund guidance.
    • Write clearly for a non-specialist audience. Avoid jargon and abbreviations but don’t be too simplistic. Remember, most of the reviewers will not have expertise in your field.
    • Convey your understanding and enthusiasm for the project through your proposal. Think about how to ‘sell’ your research project and expertise. What might appeal to an non-specialist audience?
    • Give enough background and literature context to show how your research will advance the field, but focus on what it is you want to do and the difference your research will make.
    • Be ambitious yet realistic. It often helps to show that you have thought through the practicalities of your project by including a detailed discussion of your methods with a draft timetable.
    • Be very clear about the outcomes of the research activities to be funded by the Fell Fund, in terms of publications and external research funding applications.
    • If you are requesting funding for seminars or conferences, make sure you provide a robust justification in line with the Fell Fund criteria, ie the future opportunities the event is expected to lead to, including external funding bids and future research collaborations; the benefits these will bring to Oxford; and why the full cost cannot be met from other sources. The Fell Fund would also expect that a registration fee would be charged to non-university members sufficient to cover venue, publicity and support costs.
    • A few questions to bear in mind:
      • What do you want to do?
      • Why is it important; why should it be funded?
      • Why are you the best person to conduct this research?
      • What are your research questions/objectives?
      • How will you answer/deliver these (i.e. methods)?
      • Are there any ethical or technical considerations?
      • What will your outputs be?
      • What is your timetable?
  6. Critical review from colleagues: Ask a colleague to critically review your bid, pre-submission, from the perspective of a reviewer who is not an expert in the field or the methodologies, and incorporate their advice where appropriate. This is particularly important if your bid is inter/multi-disciplinary or you are venturing into a new field of research.
  7. Letters of support from non-SSD colleagues/collaborators/users: Where another service or department, outside SSD, is involved it can be helpful to see a letter of support with sufficient detail to be persuasive that it is a priority for the other unit/dept/user. This can be particularly helpful in cases where the relationship is new or with unusual partners such as external users and a letter of support can help to demonstrate that the links described are genuine and strong.
  8. Additional brief annex: Where there is insufficient space within the page limit, extra detail, explaining an aspect of the proposed research (eg descriptions of complex methods, technical detail, etc.) could be added as an annex.
  9. Underwriting ("back-up") bids: It can often be helpful to bid to external funders and the Fell Fund at the same time, with the Fell Fund bid acting as a back-up if the external bid should fail. This helps to ensure that a project gets funded at a critical time and allows the applicant to demonstrate their commitment to the project.
  10. Co-funding is also often viewed favourably by reviewers, eg your project could be funded in part by a research council, part by a trust and part by the Fell Fund. Please explain and justify these funding interactions and funding levels, focusing especially on why the external funder will not be able to support the full project.

If you have outstanding queries relating to these guidance notes, please contact fellfund AT socsci.ox.ac.uk.