Workshops

Grant writing workshops

Free Online Webinars

I enjoy connecting with researchers across the globe by offering free online grant writing webinars at several points during the year. Information on my upcoming free online workshops is announced on this page and via my Newsletters.

Institutional & Conference Workshops

I also offer in-depth grant writing workshops for university departments and research associations.

I currently offer the following workshops whose content is always tailored to the specific researcher audience:

Workshop 1: Crafting & clarifying the core idea of your proposal

This 2-hour online workshop offers professional training in research grant writing that is designed for both early career and senior scholars working across the social sciences and humanities. It is ideally suited to groups of researchers who are in the early stages of drafting their research proposals. The overall aim is for researchers to experiment and reflect on how they can best craft their research project idea in a way that it is communicated to grant reviewers in the most compelling manner. Through inviting participants to engage with a mixture of questions posed to the group as well as with individual reflective writing exercises, the workshop’s interactive design helps participants focus on core aspects of communicating their grant idea as they begin construct their proposal draft.

Workshop 2: Grant writing as storytelling

This 2-hour online workshop offers professional training in research grant writing that is designed for both early career and senior scholars working across the social sciences and humanities. It is suited to groups of researchers who are at any stage of drafting their research proposals. The overall aim is for researchers to learn how to better communicate their grant idea to a reviewer audience by strategically inserting narrative techniques in their writing practice. The first hour of the workshop aims to persuade participants why it is useful to consider effective grant writing as a practice of storytelling, and then presents participants with a heuristic framework which is useful for thinking through how to craft the narrative of their grants. During the second hour, participants are provided with a worksheet which helps them experiment with structuring their research idea around the proposed narrative framework. The session concludes with reflection and discussion on how storytelling might influence the communication of participants’ ideas.

These workshops have been consistently well-received by researchers across several institutions, evidenced by several requests for them to be delivered as repeat sessions. These testimonials indicate how the sessions have enabled their participants to make real, practical progress in their grant writing:

“Our department, a mix of ECRs and more established academics, took Natalie’s ‘Grant writing as storytelling’ workshop. The workshop, which was a mix of discussion and reflective exercises, gave us a storytelling framework to use when presenting our research ideas to funders. Everyone who came to the workshop has given feedback that they found this incredibly useful to help make their ideas stand out and resonate in a competitive funding environment and are using it in their writing practice.”
– Dr. Claire Pierson, Department of Politics, University of Liverpool

“One of the most fruitful decisions I have made in my role of Research Centre director was to invite Dr Papanastasiou to deliver the ‘Grant writing as storytelling’ workshop. Not only Early Career Researchers, but also senior researchers have benefited greatly from her innovative approach to grant writing as a practice of storytelling. The workshop was so successful that I invited Dr Papastanasiou to deliver a second one, this time pan-university. My role entails reviewing bids before submission to funders: since the workshop I have seen several examples of narrative bid writing, with some success already coming to the Centre.”
– Prof. Federico Farini, Centre for Psychological & Sociological Sciences, University of Northampton

“The ‘Grant Writing as Storytelling’ workshop has contributed greatly to the first – but immensely crucial – stage of the conceptualisation of a research puzzle for the researchers at the School of Social and Political Science. Natalie delivered it with enthusiasm and attention to detail, offering both a really productive way to develop grant proposals, but also dealing with individual queries and the specificities that all projects and funders have. Above all, it gave researchers the confidence to find their own voice and start drafting their ideas on paper – probably the most important first step towards achieving grant success!”

– Prof. Sotiria Grek, School of Social & Political Science, University of Edinburgh

Workshop 3: Developing your first research grant

This 90-minute workshop develops early career researchers’ (postdoctoral researchers and advanced PhD researchers) understandings of how to go about developing an idea into a competitive grant proposal. It covers key principles of grant writing, and explains why grants matter to an academic career, challenges related to writing research grants, the key features of a successful research grant, and strategies for starting grant writing in the best possible way. The aim is for participants to leave the workshop with a clear understanding of how to build a grant writing strategy into the next steps of their career.

“Natalie delivered a tailored workshop on how to write research grants for Early Career Researchers during our annual conference. Her workshop was sympathetic to the challenges we as ECRs face in our career stage but also emphasised the opportunities – she helped demystify the research grant application process. She provided tangible advice on how to approach writing grants and tactics to make them successful. I recommend ECRs to go to Natalie’s workshop. It has helped me prepare for future grant applications.”

– Elsa Bengtsson Meuller, Political Studies Association Early Career Network

“Natalie delivered a brilliant session on ‘developing your first research grant’ which was pitched at just to right level of detail to appeal to our diverse group of early-career academics from different disciplines. She not only offered useful guidance on how to go about starting the process of grant writing for the first time, but also demystified the grant review process which we felt was particularly helpful. Attendees left with a good sense of how grant writing differs from other types of academic writing and feel more prepared to start their own applications.”

– Early Career Researcher support coordinator, University of Bath

Interested in getting in touch?

If you’d like to learn more about my workshop content and fees, you can fill out my contact form and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

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