The workshop also included guided interactive writing exercises, giving participants the intellectual space to experiment with different ways of communicating their ideas.

If this workshop might be of interest to your Faculty or research group feel free to reach out!

My workshop aimed to help participants re-visit their unsuccessful proposals through the lens of storytelling in order to identify what strategic changes they can make so that a reviewer can better appreciate their ideas.

If you're looking for some external support with your upcoming ERC interview feel free to get in touch! I offer specialised support for SH Panel proposals.

Two quick caveats:
1) NEVER contact a member of the review panel (this is against ERC regulations);

2) don't go into your interview with a rigid idea of who will be on the panel; for a range of reasons they may not be there, and it's important you don't feel taken by surprise if that happens.

If you've been recently invited for an ERC StG interview, it might be useful to identify what type of individuals are likely to be on your panel (in terms of their disciplinary background, general approach, etc), so you have a general sense of who will be your audience.

I've supported multiple successful ERC candidates to craft a compelling, memorable presentation narrative, and to practice delivering concise, convincing responses in the Q&A session.

For more information, feel free to email me directly at natalie[at]outstandingresearchgrants.com

Many folks have training sessions with both academic colleagues & ERC grant experts. If you're looking for an external expert to help you prepare for your SH Panel interview, I can help.

You can register on my website: outstandingresearchgrants.com/workshops/

The webinar draws on my extensive experience with supporting researchers applying for ERC grants.

And due to my previous experience working in academia, I understand the challenging intellectual processes and writing practices that are involved in crafting a grant proposal.

In this way, you can connect the dots for a reviewer, rather than leave it up to them to try to piece together a coherent message from a list of bullet points.

In this way, the narrative CV can hold a lot of potential to work in your favour when explaining your unique career and research profile.

An important focus of crafting a narrative CV is to highlight key research themes that you've developed during your career.

This is especially helpful if your research background has involved conducting research across different disciplines, empirical foci, or theoretical approaches.

This requires delicate, difficult writing, but I would argue that it’s well worth doing if you want your reviewer to appreciate the importance of your grant idea.

(I sent out a longer reflection about this in my Newsletter today; you can sign up here outstandingresearchgrants.com/newsletter/)

By far the most common issue I see in proposals is that the researcher’s own voice is too weak or completely absent from the s-o-a discussion.

This is problematic, because a reviewer will want to read the s-o-a through your critical lens, rather than through a generic, descriptive narrative.