Purpose and value of the Fellowship

The Mind Fellowship is intended to support a substantial piece of research by an academic with a permanent position at an institution of higher education in the UK or Ireland.

It may be used for a project at any stage of progress, including initial stages of research.

The Mind Fellowship is a 12-month award (pro rata for part-time Fellows at no less than 0.5 full-time equivalent).

During the period of the award, the Fellow must be released from all administrative and teaching duties, with the exception of doctoral supervision, to concentrate on research.

The Fellow will be invited to attend the first Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association taking place during the Fellowship, with registration, travel, and accommodation costs covered by the Mind Association.

Award payment and conditions

The award will be paid to the institution at which the Fellow is employed.

The award may only be used to cover a replacement appointment at the lowest spinal point of the Lecturer A scale or equivalent as specified by the rules of the institution.

The replacement appointment must be an ordinary Lectureship on the teaching and research track. It cannot be a Teaching Fellowship or a Lectureship on a teaching-focused track.

For a Fellow on a full-time contract, the replacement appointment must be a twelve-month lectureship.

For a Fellow on a part-time contract, the replacement appointment may be full-time as above or may be part-time at no less than 0.5 of full-time. In the case of a part-time replacement, the length of the appointment should be at least equivalent to a full-time appointment for 12 months (i.e. the maximum the Fellowship will fund).

The award will exactly cover the salary cost of the replacement appointment plus on-costs (National Insurance and pension; London Allowance where appropriate).

Post-award report

A report on the work supported by the Fellowship should be emailed to the Director, Professor Jonathan Webber, at MindAssoc@gmail.com no more than three months after the Fellowship has ended. This report should have two elements:

(a) A letter of confirmation from the Head of Department, Head of School, or other appropriate officer of how the money was spent, giving the name of the replacement Lecturer appointed.

(b) A brief statement of the research completed during the Fellowship.

Mind Fellows

The current holder of the Fellowship is Dr Sophie Dandelet (Cambridge) for a project titled ‘Epistemic Norms, Moral Communities, and Political Liberalism’.

The Mind Fellowship has been awarded since 2011. A list of the previous holders of the award can be found here.

Application

Applications should be sent in PDF by email attachment to The Mind Association at mindassoc@gmail.com.

You should expect an acknowledgement by email within two weeks. If you do not receive an acknowledgement, then you cannot assume your application has been safely received.

Applications must consist of three documents:

(1) A CV covering the last five years which includes: the names of two referees (not more than one from the applicant’s home institution); administrative and teaching duties; periods of research leave; any non-academic commitments curtailing research time, such as career breaks, parental leave, prolonged ill-health, or caring for a sick relative; the institutional leave, if any, that the applicant expects to have during the current academic year and the next academic year; the applicant’s entitlement to research leave under their institution’s current policy.

(2) A research proposal of not more than 1200 words saved as a separate document with no name on it and fully anonymised throughout. This should include a clear timetable of work. The review process will be in two stages and in the first stage reviewers will only look at this element of applications. These research proposals should therefore be independent documents that do not refer to material elsewhere in the application.

(3) A letter from the applicant’s Head of Department, Head of School, or equivalent university officer stating that the funds will be used in accordance with the conditions of the award.

Application data will be kept for three years after the selection process has been completed for monitoring purposes. It will then be deleted.

Selection procedure

A sub-committee of three members of the Mind Association Executive Committee (not including the Director or Treasurer) read all anonymised research proposals. Each member of the committee gives each proposal a score out of 10.

The committee meets to discuss the proposals with the highest combined scores. This meeting produces an ordered shortlist of the top three or four proposals.

The subcommittee are then allowed to see the applicants’ CVs. They hold a second meeting to decide whether any information in those CVs warrants a re-ordering of the shortlist.

The ranked shortlist is ratified by the Executive Committee.

The Director makes the offer of a Fellowship.

Timescale

The deadline for applications is 11.59pm UK time on 28 February 2025

Applicants will be notified of the outcome by the end of May.

The Fellowship should normally begin in August, September, or October 2025.