Last week, I spent an hour with the BAM Early Career Academic Network talking about how to build a team of collaborators for a grant. The room (well, the Zoom) was full of people at different stages in their grant journey: some had no experience, others had been unsuccessful, a few even had several successful bids, and were now wondering whether and how to do something bigger, more interdisciplinary, more ambitious. They are not always sure how to put a team together to do that, or how to write the team into the bid in a way reviewers will actually read favourably. This Friday’s post is the workshop version for those who couldn’t make it. A note before we start: successful grant-getters have a success rate of 1-in-3 to 1-in-5 (according to advice I received many, many years ago). The headline numbers are brutal, even when you are good at this. So this is not a recipe for never being rejected. It is about not being rejected for avoidable reasons (hopefully). Catch-up service:
Why listen to me?I’m not the biggest grant-getter out there, but I have consistently applied for and received funding from reputable funders over the years in a field that generally receives very little funding. And with grant funding, context is important. Some subjects and topics are more fundable than others. I have received extensive training and have seen many successful grant applications. I have been in research management positions where I had to sign off on all grants submitted, so I have seen how successful grant-getting teams work, and how junior scholars can build up their track record.
Funders are not (just) evaluating your CVThe first thing to internalise is that the panel is not really asking “is this PI good?” They are asking whether this specific team, with this specific mix of skills, can deliver this specific project. Your job is to make that judgment easy for them. UK funders have made this fairly explicit. The current UKRI roles guidance (last updated August 2024) names distinct role types for project leads, co-leads and specialists, which is itself an instruction: most grand-challenge programmes expect teams that cross disciplines, and often sectors (Lyall and Fletcher, 2013). Solo proposals like fellowships rarely answer the bigger questions (but are relevant for you if you need to develop a funding track record). Team composition and dynamics also predict long-term research impact more reliably than individual credentials alone (Bednarek et al., 2024; Bennett and Gadlin, 2012). The reviewers are more likely to read you generously if you make the team-fit argument well, and harshly if you don’t. Assemble: the visible halfWhen you start sketching a team, you have to select for two things at once. The first is the visible half, which funders and reviewers can see on a CV. After the jump, some reflection on the visible and the invisible work that an application has to do, what you should always negotiate early, and how you best present your team’s synergy in a grant application... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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