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Wellcome Trust-Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology Fellowship in Society and Ethics

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Purpose

This scheme enables a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD student or junior fellow to undertake a three-month fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST).

The Wellcome Trust-POST Fellowship allows unique access to a parliamentary and policy-making setting, and supports the Trust's interest in encouraging the application of research.

It is intended to help the Fellow develop an awareness of policy environments and processes, and to raise an issue relevant to the Trust's Society and Ethics programme among a parliamentary audience.

What's included

If successful in applying, you will receive a fully funded three-month minimum extension to your PhD or fellowship award, and your maintenance grant will also be paid while based at POST.

While placements typically last three months, they may be extended under exceptional circumstances.

If you are not within reasonable daily travelling distance of POST in London, we will look at your specific travel and accommodation needs and cover costs up to a maximum of £2000.

Nature of the fellowship

During your time as a Wellcome Trust-POST Fellow in Parliament, you are expected to produce a POSTnote (a short POST briefing note), to contribute to a longer report or to assist a select committee in a current enquiry. The topic of the Fellowship will be determined by liaison between you, POST and the Society and Ethics programme, depending on your research interests and the relevance and timeliness of the topic in Parliament. You will also be required to write an article for the Wellcome Trust about your Fellowship.

The fellowship will involve:

  • identifying and liaising with a wide range of interested parties, including business, academia, regulatory bodies, non-governmental organisations and government departments
  • drafting concise briefing materials
  • responding to comments from internal and external peer review.

There may also be opportunities for you to organise seminars in Parliament or elsewhere, so that you can inform or disseminate your work. In all cases, you will be encouraged to interact closely with people and activities in the two Houses of Parliament, including select committees, MPs and peers, their support services, 'All-Party Group' meetings, and the very wide range of other activities at the Palace of Westminster. You will have similar interactions with interested parties outside Parliament.

Access to relevant conferences, workshops and seminars will be arranged and you may be able to draw on training facilities provided by the Houses of Parliament.

Eligibility

You should be in the second or third year of your Wellcome Trust-funded PhD or in the first year of a Trust-funded fellowship.

POST is a strictly non-partisan organisation: you will be required to abstain from any party political or lobbying activity and generally to uphold the principles of parliamentary service, including a commitment to confidentiality, during your time with POST. If provisionally selected as a candidate, you must sign a declaration to this effect. You must also receive security clearance from the parliamentary security authorities as a condition of finally taking up the Fellowship.

You should expect to spend as much time as possible working at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. The Society and Ethics programme and POST are keen to encourage applicants from all over the UK, the Republic of Ireland or any low-to-middle-income country.

Application process

Please contact the Wellcome Trust Society and Ethics programme for an application form.

This is an annual competition and applications must be submitted by the published deadline.

An application should include your CV, a letter of support from your sponsor/supervisor and a summary of a proposed topic for a POST publication.

This summary should be no longer than two sides of A4 using size 12 font and should demonstrate:

  • why you think this subject would be of particular parliamentary interest
  • how the training you have received and your research to date will enable you to carry out this work
  • your ability to write in a style suitable for a parliamentary (rather than an academic) audience.

Before preparing your summary you should examine the 'POST style' of writing, and the types of policy issues that are raised and discussed. All of POST’s publications are available online. For assistance, please contact Dr Sarah Bunn: bunnsk@parliament.uk.

All applications will be assessed by a panel consisting of staff from the Society and Ethics programme and POST.

Deadlines

We award one Wellcome Trust-POST Fellowship each year.

The deadline for applications for 2013 is now closed (2 April). Next year’s application deadline will be 1 April.

The start date of the placement can be any date between October 2013 and January 2014. This is to be agreed between the successful applicant, POST, the Society and Ethics programme and the applicant's supervisor and university.

We expect to hold interviews in the first half of April 2013.

Contacts

Grants Section (Society and Ethics)
Wellcome Trust
Gibbs Building
215 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE, UK

T +44 (0)20 7611 8893
E se@wellcome.ac.uk

Wellcome Trust, Gibbs Building, 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK T:+44 (0)20 7611 8888