Pathways to Knowledge Fellowships

About the project

Pathways to Knowledge (P2K) fellowships will bring the best minds to the Institute of Advanced Study to advance human knowledge & challenge the foundations of disciplinary knowledge. Fellows will address whether biases (such as religion, culture, politics, customs and beliefs, normativity, researcher competition, and non-human methodologies – such as AI) have negatively affected the generation of evidence-based knowledge.

P2K fellows will choose specific questions and “challenge the state of the art” by determining whether missed opportunities have prevented the acquisition of knowledge and will seek to recalibrate the target discipline towards a more balanced and evidence-based approach to knowledge development by employing the best interdisciplinary research approaches. P2K fellows will also seek to answer the question whether biases—due for example to gender, national origin, language, and race—have led to wrong attribution of key transformational advances and will help to more accurately attribute discoveries to practitioners and practices.

There are currently no plans for further calls for this scheme

Fellowships are offered for one year and will be based at the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) at the University of Warwick. The Fellowships are open to any researcher who has a PhD and more than four years postdoctoral experience, from senior research fellows to full professors, as we wish to support the development of exciting new thinking rather than focus on specific career stages.

The fellowship includes salary and a budget to cover research costs (£5k for laboratory-based projects & £2.5k for non-laboratory projects). Applicants who wish to conduct laboratory-based work will need the support of an academic with the necessary facilities in an appropriate department at Warwick.

Successful applicants would be expected to be seconded to Warwick from their current institution for the period of the fellowship. Current Warwick researchers and academics from all tracks (R, T, R&T) are also encouraged to apply. Fellows will be employed by Warwick for the duration of fellowship on a salary equivalent to Assistant Professor. For applicants from outside Warwick and for more senior applicants we would be willing to explore a secondment option.

We are not prescriptive of topics of research and applications within the broad remit of the fellowships are welcome from any discipline. In line with the mission of the IAS, there should be a strong interdisciplinary element in the research.

The expectation is that the fellows will use the fellowship to undertake a significant piece of innovative, interdisciplinary research which challenges the foundations of existing disciplinary knowledge. Fellows will be expected to produce high quality publications from their work and are strongly encouraged to contribute towards developing new curricula for undergraduate and graduate teaching (in Warwick and / or in their home institutions following the fellowship) as well as to work with the Warwick Institute of Engagement to develop outreach activity linked to their research.

Applications for P2K fellowships are now open and the call will close on 29th February 2024. Three fellowships will be offered in the current call and there will be a second call for applications in late 2024.

We welcome applications from “individual applicants” and “applicant pairs” who investigate research questions and challenges from the perspective of different subject areas (ideally combining two or more of these disciplinary areas: arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, and medicine). Each applicant should submit a separate application and indicate of the application form that the proposed projects are linked.

Applications will only be accepted via the advertised position on the University of Warwick jobs portal which will go live soon. All applications must also have a completed P2K application form uploaded with application. This form will contain the details of the proposed research project and other details necessary for the assessment of the applications. ANY APPLICATIONS WITHOUT A COMPLETED P2K APPLICATION FORM WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE P2K APPLICATION FORM SHOULD BE UPLOADED IN LIEU OF THE COVER LETTER REQUESTED ON THE ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM

After the closing date applications will be checked for eligibility and then peer reviewed with the highest ranked proposals being invited for Interview. We expect interviews to take place in April 2024 with a start date for successful applicants in Autumn 2024

There is no option to upload the P2K Application form on the online system, how do I submit this? The P2K application form should be uploaded as the Covering Letter requested on the online application system. Covering letters are not required for these fellowships

Research areas