The support is built around a cohort-based programme for supervisors and prospective fellows, combining individual conversations and group sessions, such as this orientation session, to help shape and position ideas early, understand what makes an MSCA proposal work, avoid common pitfalls, and move towards a first draft with greater confidence and clarity. The next stage is an in-person grant-writing day to move towards full drafts.
The aim of our support is to create a helpful and positive environment for busy researchers to prepare strong applications. It is also about reducing the all-too-common drop-off that happens between an interesting project idea and a submitted proposal. Good ideas need nurturing, structure and the right kind of support if they are to become competitive applications.
As always, there is a strong people dimension to this work, and this is one part we enjoy very much and we find very rewarding: the conversation with supervisors and fellows, hearing about their research ideas, their motivations and their career aspirations, and then helping them translate those with confidence into proposals that are clear, credible and purposeful.
