Transatlantic visiting fellowships

ESRC and SSRC

In 2004 ESRC and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) announced fellowships for scholars from the Americas (North, Central, South and the Caribbean) to visit and engage in collaborative activities with members of ESRC-supported projects in Britain, or for British scholars at ESRC-supported projects to visit collaborators in the Americas.

The research

The ESRC and the SSRC have a common mission of promoting, funding, and disseminating important and socially useful knowledge in the social sciences.

Fundable activities include but are not strictly limited to:

• engaging in collaborative or complementary research that will add a new international comparative focus to existing or new research projects
• engaging with a range of researchers, including younger scholars, to stimulate international and comparative dimensions to their thinking
• writing co-authored papers, articles, and books
• developing new proposals for joint research.

The collaboration

The scheme is designed to encourage communication and cooperation between social scientists in Great Britain and the Americas, and to explore and develop possibilities for future exchanges to be organized by the ESRC and the SSRC. The fifth round of the scheme should be announced in early 2008. Visits may take place at any time of year, starting on or after 1 June 2008 as long as they are completed by 1 September 2009. It is expected that approximately eighteen research fellowships of up to $9,500 (approximately £5000) will be awarded.

Quotation: Claire Callender, Professor of Social Policy, Families and Social Capital Research Group at the London Southbank University, visited the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, Pennsylvania State University under this scheme.

On her return, she said:

"Most excitingly, the comparative research I undertook while at Pennsylvania State University formed the basis for my successful application for a Fulbright New Century Scholarship 2007-08 which this year is focusing on 'HE in the 21st Century: Access and Equity'. So I will be continuing my research on institutional aid for students in the US and England at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, building on the work conducted while at Penn State and the networks formed while there. In addition, my host at Penn State will be coming to my institution for his sabbatical, so we can undertake further collaborative research."

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