Googling for Grant Dollars

Dan Royles

Foreign Language Lecturer at University of Angers

 

I had a recent email conversation with a fellow graduate student who is also a friend:

Friend: Hey … question for you. How do you find postdoc opportunities?
Me: Google “humanities postdoc.”
Friend: LOL. Smart ass.
Me: I’m not kidding! That’s literally how I look!
Friend: “Oh [expletive redacted], really?”
Really. And that doesn’t just go for seeking a postdoc. Finding money for your graduate work in the humanities or social sciences isn’t easy, but nor is it rocket science. It goes something like this:
1. Find funding sources.
2. Apply to funding sources.
3. Repeat until retirement.
Step 1: Find the funding.
The Internet makes it almost criminally easy to track down grant opportunities. H-Net, for one, brings announcements right to your inbox. Subscribe to at least a handful of different lists related to your research, and pay close attention to both the weekly job guides, which sometimes contain fellowship opportunities, and the weekly announcement e-mails, which compile grants, fellowships, and prizes.

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