Embedded Files
Find out what a fellowship is, if you are ready to apply for a fellowship and how to apply at Sheffield.
What is a fellowship and how does it differ from a standard grant?
What is a fellowship and how does it differ from a standard grant?
The main difference between a fellowship and a standard grant is that fellowships focus on the award holder's career and skills development. Furthermore, a fellowship will fund an individual whereas a grant will fund a project. Fellowships are primarily about developing research leaders. Therefore a fellowship, depending on the career stage, might help you to become independent from your PhD supervisor or PI, give you the experience of leading others, help you to establish or consolidate your own group, transition to a different discipline, or lead a team of international collaborators. The key differences are outlined below:
Fellowships focus on the individual and cannot be transferred to someone else, whereas a grant is about the project and could be transferred to a project co-lead.
Fellowships don't usually require you to have an academic contract; in fact some require you not to have one if they are aimed at early career researchers, whereas grants usually do.
Fellowships usually specify a career stage (e.g. early career or senior) or number of years since PhD award, so it is important to check eligibility criteria. Grants do not usually have any restrictions in terms of career stage.
Fellowships require significantly more time commitment than grants. Usually it must be the fellow's main source of employment and their time should be protected from other responsibilities such as teaching and administration. Time commitments can be anywhere from 40% to 100% whereas grants are usually just 10-20%. Fellowships are also usually much longer in duration and can last anywhere from 2 to 10 years. Grants tend to be shorter (up to 3 years but often just 1 or 2).
Fellowships typically support ambitious, forward-looking research programmes that demonstrate the potential for a significant step-change in the field and contribute to the applicant’s development as an independent research leader. While many fellowships allow space for higher-risk or transformative ideas, this varies by scheme and career stage. Standard project grants, by contrast, generally focus on more defined, deliverable research questions and are not tied to an individual’s career development pathway.
Fellowships require significant investment from the host institution in the researcher's skills, professional development and career as well as investment in the research (which may be in the form of access to office space and labs, facilities, equipment, technicians, travel funds or PhD studentships). You also need to have a strong justification for why this institution is the right one to host your fellowship. Therefore, it is crucial to secure support from the institution before developing your application.
Preparing a fellowship application
Preparing a fellowship application
Use this guide to help you decide if you are ready to apply for a fellowship at the University of Sheffield. Fellowships are incredibly competitive and require significant preparation time. Allow yourself at least 6 months to develop your proposal from initial idea to submission and be aware that outcomes can take around 9-12 months after you have submitted. You also need to be aware of the timelines for any internal selection processes. Therefore, if you are on a fixed-term research contract, do not wait until your contract is coming to an end to start thinking about applying. Plan ahead and make sure your CV and your idea are fellowship-ready before making an application.
1. Are you ready for a fellowship?
1. Are you ready for a fellowship?
In this section:
Is a fellowship the right career pathway for you?
Can you demonstrate the appropriate level of independence?
Do you have a strong track record for your career stage?
Is a fellowship the right career pathway for you?
Is a fellowship the right career pathway for you?
There are a number of questions you should ask yourself before deciding whether or not you want to pursue a fellowship:
Would my track record (funding, awards and recognition, outputs and contributions to your field, public and policy engagement etc.) be competitive relative to my peers at the same career stage?
Do I want to become a research leader, leading my own group and and managing both projects and people?
Do I have the support of senior colleagues (such as your School Director of Research and Innovation) and mentors to apply for a fellowship?
Why me, why now? Why is this the right time to get a fellowship? It has to be a stronger reason than that your post-doc position is ending or you just want to do research rather than teaching.
Am I ready for a step-change in my career? A fellowship is usually a great platform for securing a permanent academic position or promotion.
Demonstrating independence
Demonstrating independence
It is vital to convince the reviewers of your application that you have some independence from your Principal Investigator (PI) or PhD supervisor. Change the narrative from "I am a postdoc in..." to "I am an expert in...". What evidence can you provide of your independence? Consider the following:
Have you got a mentor who is not your PI or supervisor? If not, your School can support you to find someone who can provide mentorship on managing large projects and career development. For some fellowships this is a requirement as part of the development plan.
What examples do you have of leading a research vision and development of your own ideas?
Have you got any first-author publications, published independently of your PhD supervisor, commercialised your work, or been awarded any small grants or prizes?
Have you built any collaborations (academic, industrial, policy, third sector) outside of your institution?
Track record/CV
Track record/CV
Depending on the funding scheme and discipline this can vary, but funding bodies are increasingly looking at a wider variety of outputs to demonstrate track record. It can be helpful to review your CV and compare it with the track records of your peers who have been successful with the fellowship type you are targeting. Reviewers will also be assessing your key findings, your contributions to the research, the contribution to knowledge and advancement of the field, your research and leadership experience. Below are the key areas to consider. The level of achievement in each area will depend on your career stage and the examples provided are not exhaustive lists:
Research outputs (journal papers, patents, shared data, pre-prints, monographs, book chapters)
Disseminating your work within your research community (invited talks, chairing a conference panel, organising workshops)
Grants, prizes or awards (PI/co-l on a grant, equipment grants, travel/conference grants, knowledge exchange funding, commercialisation funding, PhD awards)
Leadership skills and experience (mentoring/supervising PhD students, overseeing a project, changing research culture, initiating new collaborations)
Professional activities (membership or elected fellowship of academic societies, reviewing for journals or funders, chairing committees)
Engaging beyond academia (industry partners, policy influence, learned societies, public talks, schools outreach, public and charity sector partnerships).
2. Do you have an ambitious but feasible idea?
2. Do you have an ambitious but feasible idea?
Now your profile is ready, you need to consider whether your proposed research project is ready. Use the checklist below to assess your project's readiness:
Your work is your own and independent from your PhD supervisor or PI.
You have a novel idea that addresses an identifiable problem or research gap that needs solving.
The project will offer a real step-change in the research field, as opposed to incremental change. It is not simply an extension of your PhD research or a previous grant.
You have a clear 5-10 year vision for the proposed research (this could be beyond the length of the fellowship): be clear about what changes or advances you will make and what impact it will have.
You have a clear plan for where the project will lead beyond the fellowship and how it will establish you as a research leader in your field. What other fields of inquiry will it open up?
Your proposed research aligns with the research priority areas of the University of Sheffield and your host School. You can write a strong justification for why Sheffield is the right place to host your fellowship.
Setting out your research vision
Setting out your research vision
When setting out your vision for a fellowship, you need to quickly capture the reviewers interest and make them want to read on. Essentially you also need to persuade the panel why you and your project should be funded over potentially hundreds of other applications. It can be helpful to consider the following questions:
What is the research gap or problem you are trying to address?
Why is this research important? Why is it needed in your field and what will it enable?
How is your approach the best approach to this problem? How is it novel? Consider your competitors here and how others have approached the problem.
Why is the project timely and urgent? If it isn't done now, what opportunities might be missed?
Why has no one done this before? Have you developed a new methodology or discovered something that enables this research to happen?
Why are you best placed to carry out this research? Here you should link to your unique expertise, skills, partnerships and track record.
3. Identify your funding scheme
3. Identify your funding scheme
Funding for fellowships can come from a wide range of sources including the UK Research Councils, European Research Council, charities and societies, industry or government bodies. You should research the funders, sign up to mailing lists and start looking approximately one year ahead to to identify the schemes available that you can apply to. You also need to ensure your research vision is in line with the remit and research priorities of your chosen funder. Please be aware that some fellowship schemes cap the number of submissions a university can make, which means there will be an internal selection process.
In this section:
UKRI
ERC Grants
Charity and Academy/Society Funders
Choosing the right scheme
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
UKRI brings together the 7 Research Councils, Innovate UK and Research England under a single umbrella. From the end of 2025, UKRI have launched a Fellowship Investment Framework to align and simplify fellowship schemes across the funding councils. The UKRI website contains details of each Research Council, their strategic priorities and funding opportunities which can be searched through their Funding Finder. You can also sign up to mailing lists there from specific councils. For recurring fellowship schemes, it is a good idea to anticipate when a call will open and expected deadline, then start planning and getting approvals, rather than waiting for the call to open. For one-off challenge-driven fellowship calls, these tend to have a pre-announcement before the call opens to allow you more preparation time.
European Research Council Grants (ERC)
European Research Council Grants (ERC)
Since Brexit, the UK has become an Associated Country (AC) allowing us to participate in Horizon Europe. ERC grants fit under Pillar 1 - Excellent Science funding. ERC grants are very competitive and aimed at outstanding researchers across all disciplines, with a research proposal aimed at pushing the frontiers of knowledge. They are individual awards, but differ from typical fellowship schemes which often emphasise career development. ERC grants tend to put more emphasis on the research project and provide researchers with protected research time and significant resources. Nonetheless, due to their prestige, they can be transformative for the awardees career and open doors.
There are different ERC schemes depending on your career stage.
Charity and Academy Funders
Charity and Academy Funders
Some charity and academy funders will fund a broad range of research from across disciplines, while others have a specific remit or discipline area. For example, the Leverhulme Trust fund research in all disciplines excluding studies of disease, illness and disability, research intended to inform medical practice or medical applications, while the Royal Academy of Engineering will fund research in Engineering, broadly defined.
The Academy of Medical Sciences covers biomedical and health research, and Wellcome fund research to improve life, health and wellbeing. The Royal Society covers STEM subjects excluding clinical medicine. The British Academy covers humanities and social sciences. Check each website for details of fellowship opportunities. You can also sign up via your institutional email address to email alerts on Research Professional.
Choosing the right scheme
Choosing the right scheme
There are a wide range of fellowship types enabling different career pathways:
Research career development - postdoctoral, early career and mid-career schemes are often aimed at moving to the next stage of an academic career
Upskilling/reskilling - building skills in a priority area to increase capacity or leadership in that area
Career re-entry - aimed at those returning to academia after a continuous break from research such as going into industry or time off for caring
Interdisciplinary or discipline change - usually early career to apply knowledge to an issue in a different discipline
Knowledge exchange or sector change - this could be a secondment to industry or from industry to academia. Or knowledge transfer
UKRI have recently published a new Fellowship Investment Framework which categorises all of their fellowships as one of three types.
4. Check if there is an internal selection process
4. Check if there is an internal selection process
Increasingly funders apply demand management to universities for fellowship schemes. This means that the university is capped at a set number of applications. Where this is the case, the university has to run an institutional selection process. An example of a scheme with demand management is the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
Often you will need to get School approval before applying to an institutional process. Different institutions operate different selection process timelines so it is important you check with your institution as soon as possible.
At the University of Sheffield, selection processes are advertised via the Faculty funding news email distribution list and advertised externally on the relevant Faculty Fellowship webpages.
5. Get your School's support
5. Get your School's support
You should ensure that you are a good fit with the School and Faculty to which you are applying and they are a good fit for your proposed research and career development goals. Does your research align with the School/Faculty research strategy? Is the research environment suitable for your proposed research? Have you identified a suitable academic mentor who is supportive of you and your research? They don't have to be in exactly the same research area and sometimes it can be helpful to have a second mentor outside of your specific field but has followed a career pathway that you are interested in following.
Even when there is no demand management, you will usually need to get the support of your host School before you can apply for a fellowship. This is because fellowships often require substantial support and investment from the host organisation. For some schemes there may be a requirement for the organisation to provide financial or in-kind support or an open-ended contract at the end of the fellowship. As such, it is vital that you check what your School or Faculty process is for applying to a fellowship scheme. Sometimes this involves speaking directly to the School Director of Research and Innovation (SDRI) or it could involve completing an EOI form.
More information and contact details
More information and contact details
Existing staff and students:
Existing staff and students:
If you have a general enquiry about fellowships and fellowship support please contact the Research Growth Team mailbox (rsresearchgrowth@sheffield.ac.uk).
Advice on finding research funding opportunities
External applicants:
External applicants:
Created by the Research Growth Team at the University of Sheffield
Created by the Research Growth Team at the University of Sheffield
Report abuse