The Holy Grail: In Pursuit of the Dissertation Proposal
Michael Watts, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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The Funding Regime: Selection Criteria and Processes
Before I turn to the nuts and bolts of the writing process, let me say a few words about the political economy of funding and proposal writing. You will doubtless be turning to a number of funding agencies -- Federal (the National Science Foundation), Foundations (Ford, Carnegie, MacArthur), small donors (AAUW), NGOs (the Aspen Institute) and research organizations like the Social Science Research Council. Each of these organizations have quite different interests, forms of governance and review, and may vary quite markedly in terms of the nature of the proposal they request (a 2 page Fulbright application versus a 15 page NSF grant). Such variability speaks directly to the need to do and consider several things:
- Identify the panoply of organizations that might consider funding a project such as your own on say military security; the Foundations register, your University research office and this website are obvious places to begin! You might also want to check out our resource page.
- Be creative and flexible is reading the rubric of each funder and the specific program in question -- perhaps a program on "peace and co-operation" -- to consider the ways in which your own interests may be 'packaged' (take note: not compromised) to be eligible for program and congruent with the grant guidelines.
- Dig around to locate background information on the funding agency (what sorts of projects have they funded in the past, who is on the selection committee?).
- Take careful note of the deadlines and the requirements of each application to give yourself time to prepare your proposals (six months minimum of writing, feedback and rewriting, and requesting letters of support.) As a teacher, let me say that a very quick way to seriously piss off your overworked advisor and to undermine your credibility is to request that letter of recommendation the day before the deadline.
- Recall that all such research competitions are competitions! Getting support is competitive, and becoming more so. The consequences are severalfold. You have to give the competition your best shot (you cannot submit a piece of garbage just because the deadline comes around). You must understand that the proposal will be read by a number of experts in your field -- screeners, selection committees members, program officers and the like. You have to be writing to your peers recognizing and the experts will be sitting in judgement on what you write.
- Your project will be (for better or worse) assessed against others; research monies are tight. A reviewer/screener might be reading 30 such proposals from which he/she has to 'deselect' 20. To stand a chance your proposal must not simply be solid and good; it must jump out of the pile. There are several ways in my experience in which proposal can jump out of the pile: one is the proposal that has a typo in the first line or has the hypothesis buried in trivial details in a footnote on page 8. I would not recommend either strategy. Your proposal must 'grab' the reader: a tight, compelling, well-written and clever opening paragraph does wonders (I speak from the bitter experience of reading 100 proposals a year throughout the 1980s and 1990s for SSRC, NSF and other funders). A meandering fishing expedition will endure that your proposal is heading for the wastebasket. This is crude and harsh perhaps but the conditions under which your project is reviewed demands some serious reflection.
- You only have one time only to vote. Most, but not all, programs have one deadline per year. This speaks again to giving yourself the best chance at success -- allow yourself time to think, write, and plan for the deadline. You cannot begin too early.
Next page: Primary Objectives and Parameters
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