The annual call for European Union international research fellowships will be coming soon. These are often referred to as post-docs, but in practice they are suitable for anyone with a) a PhD in hand or b) at least four years of research experience who would like to spend a year or two at a university in the EU research area (which happily includes Norway. Don’t ask about Britain.) The guiding principle is that this is an opportunity to develop a new competence under the mentorship of someone particularly suited to helping you develop both the project and your career. Pitch a topic to the potential mentor and if it clicks, then you write the application together. You don’t need to be an EU citizen: the only restriction is that you can’t have lived in Norway for more than twelve months during the previous three years.

So why should you think of Stavanger? Apart from the fact it’s just been ranked the fifth most liveable city in the world there’s also our growing environmental humanities group, and a number of faculty who would be delighted to work with you. I’m a historian with broad interests in everything polar — particularly related to science, the environment, and politics — and I’d love to help with applications anywhere within that broad field. (I’m also very happy to work on topics related to the history of the oceans, which I’ve also written on.)

You’ll find details below on the internal UiS process. Note the deadline of 28 February if you want to be considered for the grant writing workshop, which in our experience tends to be helpful, but which absolutely isn’t essential. It’s good in any case to start thinking early. Please don’t hesitate to send me an email with any questions. I’d love to hear from you.

The Greenhouse is now accepting proposals from scholars interested in applying for the EU Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships program (MSCA IF) in 2020. The MSCA IF program is for scholars who already hold a PhD to spend up to 2 years at a European university in order to advance their research and career. In the previous call, three persons affiliated with the Greenhouse received MSCA IF funding.

We are looking for early career researchers who will use the MSCA IF as a training and exchange period in addition to working on their independent research project. At the Greenhouse, we are interested in hosting MSCA fellows with environmental humanities projects who would benefit from being in an interdisciplinary dynamic environmental humanities environment and working closely with one or more members of Greenhouse.

Through the University of Stavanger’s EU grants office, The Greenhouse can arrange for potential applicants for the MSCA program to attend a grant writing workshop on 3 June 2020, which will discuss the application writing process, required contents of the MSCA IF application, and evaluation of applications. The grants office will select ten participants from across the university to attend this training, which we have found to be excellent training for this particular grant. These candidates will also get an external review of their proposals.

In order to take advantage of this training opportunity, we need to receive a statement of interest no later than 28 February 2020. Send an email to the Greenhouse directors Finn Arne Jørgensen (finn.a.jorgensen@uis.no) and Dolly Jørgensen (dolly.jorgensen@uis.no) with a CV and project statement of no more than 2 pages that gives us an idea of what you would work on during a MSCA stay, which skills you need to develop through training, and how it would align with the Greenhouse program area.

A note about the grant application timing: The official MSCA call for 2020 will be issued on 8 April 2020, with an application due date on 9 September 2020. If selected for an award, the exchange period can start from late 2021.