Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships 2024 - Applications for hosting at the Centre of Latin American Studies

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships 2024 

Applications for hosting at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge 

Deadline: 4pm GMT, 2 November 2023 

The Centre of Latin American Studies (CLAS), University of Cambridge, invites applications for hosting from candidates for Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship scheme in 2024. The Centre has a thriving community of MPhil and PhD students, and is a lively hub for research on Latin America carried out by post-docs and academic staff across the university. Successful applicants would be asked to make a modest contribution to teaching on our interdisciplinary MPhil in Latin American Studies, within their chosen field(s) and in accordance with the terms of the Leverhulme scheme. 

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships are open to applicants who have received their PhD since 23 February 2022 and no later than the LT deadline on 22 February 2024. They will fund an early-career postdoctoral salary and annual research expenses of £6,000 for three years. 50% of the salary costs must be match-funded by the host institution, and at Cambridge it is the Isaac Newton Trust who take care of this. The funding call is technically single-stage, but each year we must hold a preliminary departmental competition to nominate two candidates for the Newton Trust. They then make their offers of match-funding in time for Leverhulme’s final deadline. 

The Isaac Newton Trust site contains details about eligibility criteria, what the scheme offers, and what your initial application to departments should contain. 

Some exemptions to the eligibility criteria above will be made for applicants who can demonstrate their work has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic- please see the Eligibility section of Leverhulme’s call page for more details about this. 

If you are interested in applying for a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in 2024 then please send the following items to Dan Jones by 4pm on 2 November 2023, which will be reviewed by a panel of academics convened by the Head of Department, ranked in order of competitiveness, and forwarded to the Isaac Newton Trust for review at the start of the New Year: 

• a cover sheet
• a brief c.v. (not exceeding two sides), and 
• a draft of the three items required for the Leverhulme application: 
  
  1.       a list of your major publications (maximum one side) 
  
  2.       a statement of your current research (maximum 250 words) and 
  
  3.       a detailed statement of your proposed research (maximum two sides)

In addition to the above, two letters of reference are needed, of which only one can come from within Cambridge. The national stage of the Leverhulme competition requires a third reference as well (also external), but this is not necessary for the internal INT competition. 

Please ask your referees to send their letters directly to hssrga@admin.cam.ac.uk (addressed ‘to whom it may concern’ and with your name in the subject line) by the deadline on 2^nd November, not to the Isaac Newton Trust. Please be aware of the rules surrounding referee eligibility which can be found in the scheme notes here. 

Guidance on eligibility and how to write your proposal can be found on the Leverhulme site. Ultimately, the Isaac Newton Trust will be looking to back proposals with a strong chance of success, so it is important to follow these notes when writing your statements of research. 

If you have any queries about the call or the selection process please contact Dan Jones.