Information for Postdoctoral Fellowship Applicants

*Please note that British Academy are yet to confirm details for the 2025 round, so some details may need to change*

• Deadline for initial expression of interest and mentor statement: TBC
• Notification to the successful applicants who will submit with HCA: TBC
• ​​Funder's deadline: TBC

This two-year fellowship is open to early career researchers who work outside the UK and do not hold UK citizenship.

Applicants are expected to have discussed their application with their mentor in HCA before the first deadline.  For the first HCA deadline, applicants are asked to send to hca-research@ed.ac.uk:  

1. a brief outline of their research proposal (which should be no more than 400 words); and
2. a two-page CV. 

HCA mentors are also expected to provide a supporting statement to the same address by this date.  

Details about last year's round can be found on the BA International Fellowship website.

• Funder's deadline: TBC (submissions are made directly to IASH)

This is a 10-month fellowship managed by the University's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH).  The Fellowship cycles through the three subject areas within HCA annually.  This year applications are welcome from Archaeology. 

The  Fellowship is intended to encourage outstanding interdisciplinary research, international scholarly collaboration, and networking activities of visiting Research Fellows together with academics in HCA. Fellows will be expected to work in collaboration with one or more members of HCA academic staff, and to take an active part in IASH interdisciplinary events.  

For more information, please see the IASH's website. 

Candidates for the IASH-HCA Postdoctoral Fellowship should have been successfully awarded a PhD by the time they apply and must be within 3 years of PhD completion (with allowance made for career interruptions due to maternity leave, family commitments, illness, or other accepted exceptional circumstances).  For 2025-26, this means submission of a final version of the thesis with all corrections was made after April 2022 and before May 2025. A supporting statement is required from an HCA staff member.

• Webinar about the scheme: 27 May 2025
• Deadline for initial applications to HCA Research Office: 2 June 2025
• Funder deadline: 10 September 2025

There is an HCA review process for this scheme before we can confirm support.  Before you submit the initial application, you should already have identified and discussed your application with an academic mentor within the School.  

For the HCA deadline you need to send to hca-research@ed.ac.uk by 2 June 2025: 

• Your CV (2 pages maximum)
• A brief outline of your proposal (maximum 800 words). The research proposal should explain the choice of HCA as the host venue and focus in particular on 1.1 and 1.3 of the application.

1.1 Quality and pertinence of the project’s research and innovation objectives (and the extent to which they are ambitious, and go beyond the state of the art)

1.3 Quality of the supervision, training and of the two-way transfer of knowledge between researcher and host

This is an international mobility fellowship, and researchers of any nationality can apply as long as they have spent less than twelve months in the UK in the three years prior to their application. Research proposals are assessed on the basis of academic excellence, and as the pool of potential applicants is so large, standards are very high.  For further information, and to check that you meet all eligibility criteria, please see the Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship website: 

• Postdoctoral Fellowships - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

The University's central Research Office are running a Proposal Masterclass about this scheme on 27 May 2025: 

• MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships | Edinburgh Research Office

• Deadline for initial application to HCA Research Office: 28 July 2025.
• ​​Funder deadline: 1 October 2025.

Applications for this scheme go through a shortlisting process within HCA.  You should have discussed your application with a mentor in HCA before the initial deadline. 

For the initial deadline, you should send to hca-research@ed.ac.uk:

• A brief summary of your research proposal (800 words maximum).  The focus of the proposal should be the proposed programme of research and your reason(s) for choosing HCA as the host institution. A budget is not required for this stage.
• Your CV. The CV should be no more than two pages (including a maximum of 6 publications). The CV should be formatted to Arial font size 11; margins no smaller than 2cm; and line spacing no smaller than a single line.

Applicants should be UK or EEA nationals or have a PhD from a UK university. The main selection criteria is academic excellence. For further information and to check the eligibility criteria, please see the British Academy's website:

• Postdoctoral Fellowships | The British Academy

Applications for Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships open in January 2025, but our internal process begins ca November.

• Deadline for initial applications to HCA Research Office: TBC
• Notification to the successful applicants who will submit with HCA: TBC
• Funder deadline: TBC

Applications for this scheme go through a shortlisting process within HCA. For this initial stage, you should submit a research proposal and a CV that includes publications.  You should also send us contact details of a referee (who is external to the School) who the research office will contact once we have received your application.  The proposal and the CV should each be a maximum of 2 pages A4. The research proposal should include:

• A detailed statement of the proposed research;
• Research relevant to the proposal being carried out in the host department; and
• Additional reasons for selecting the proposed host department and institution.

The proposal and CV should also both adhere to Leverhulme’s guidelines on formatting: Arial font size 11; margins no smaller than 2cm; and line spacing no smaller than a single line. For eligibility criteria and further information about the scheme, please check Leverhulme's website. For more information about the initial application, please contact our Research Office.