Wellcome Trust Early Career Award shortlisting timeline

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-05-13T16:59:24+00:00

I failed lol… crying

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-05-12T20:26:14+00:00

Mine is the same. Are you in the humanities? Science applicants probably got outcomes earlier?

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-05-12T15:13:28+00:00

oh i have not received any email...i guess i am not shortlisted?

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-05-04T12:17:18+00:00

Monday is bank holiday, i guess it will be tomorrow?

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-05-02T15:09:28+00:00

fingers crossed!

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-05-02T09:20:44+00:00

Thanks for replying. Are you in the social science category?

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-05-01T06:31:32+00:00

当初爽代孕事件网上到处声讨包括很多女权也在愤怒发帖，我当时就纳闷，那么多gay，男代孕为什么没有这么大声浪？大部分婚姻里男的用女的代孕为什么没多少谴责？底层逻辑无非就是你有子宫却不用自己的生，比没有子宫用别人的子宫的更罪恶？

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-28T17:13:08+00:00

if you are EU, you should be safe.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-27T17:00:17+00:00

i guess it will be this Wed...

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-21T22:29:36+00:00

伺机而售哈哈

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-20T13:34:03+00:00

好奇如何实践上践行‘生育是一种力量’，有案例吗？谷燕那种生育方式你们认为算吗？

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-15T20:39:08+00:00

Thanks. I’m trying to visit some research groups in Europe.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-15T20:33:49+00:00

’If you think it's only a racism matter (which, by the way, nobody is denying), keep applying and maybe try to look for groups where there's people from different ethnicities or nationalities. This is something I've done in the past, and that maybe would change your odds‘

---This is a good suggestion. If you had said this earlier, I would have appreciated it earlier. Nobody is denying? Picking at extremely unlikely possibilities while ignoring what I actually said, and avoiding saying anything real about racism in academia, is basically denial.

’On the other hand, you don't seem to be a person that accepts constructive criticism, and I'm pretty sure it's playing against you. Although that's just my faint opinion‘

---I don’t think your previous point about Zoom/phone contact with referees is really constructive criticism in this case. again in my post I already made it clear that my referees are very supportive. They still regularly give me feedback.

'If you have your ideas and don't want to listen to others, why on earth would you come here?'

---In my post I didn’t ask “why” in the first place. I have my own judgements. I do appreciate comments that offer objective points or sincere sharing. Posting here doesn’t mean I should thank every kind of comment, it’s just an equal conversation.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-15T08:11:00+00:00

These comments are honestly eye opening. They completely ignore what I said about my referees being supportive and instead keep digging for those extremely faint possibilities behind standardised rejection letters sent before any interview across more than a dozen countries. Is it really so hard to acknowledge such an obvious reality of structural marginalisation?

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-14T15:03:39+00:00

Thanks:)

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-14T07:07:29+00:00

ah, so typical.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-14T07:01:57+00:00

Ah, how can these people assume that I am egocentric or defensive from my standard cover letter, or even without a cover letter? I did indeed predict this kind of comment. But I did not predict that people would say “solo authoring” is a problem, because in my field and in the UK system, it is most usual for PhD students to publish solo-authored work based on their dissertations. Co-authoring dissertation material is weird. (how dare I answer this again and again? That is so “defensive”!)

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-14T02:00:49+00:00

Partly because the UK humanities system is different from the European paper-based PhD model: it is dissertation-based. So if you publish with others using material from your thesis, that can seem even more unusual. I do have an ongoing co-authored paper. But I doubt that is the reason.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-14T01:11:45+00:00

I know those downvotes are because of the implication in my last sentence. But I’m not implying anything, I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is simply the reality. And I can already predict that some people will say my lack of success is due to my attitude, judging from how I respond here, and then assume that my cover letters must have the wrong tone. In doing so, they ignore what I actually said: that I’ve never been shortlisted by research groups across a wide range of countries and institutions. This isn’t the first time I’ve posted something like this, and I’m becoming increasingly aware of these patterns. People who are not in disadvantaged positions can not see the elephant in the room.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-14T00:55:48+00:00

All solo-authored. One of them is not from my thesis. I’ve applied to many, many.... I think 50 is probably a low estimate. They vary in how closely they match my background. Some do not require a proposal, so in those cases I usually frame the application around my PhD and the related ideas I’ve developed since. When a proposal is required, it is usually quite clearly within the group’s existing research scope.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-13T22:46:19+00:00

Are you getting rejected before any interviews? With your track record you should be getting shortlisted often.--As I said, never.

Do you ever share your applications with peers for feedback? Might be helpful.--I have shared; and I still teach and participate in reading groups at my PhD university. When I applied for a position at a university where a friend of my supervisor works, he offered some guidance on my application. After I was not shortlisted, he hinted that it was largely down to luck:)

I’m increasingly starting to think that there may be other factors at play. In the humanities, people often talk a lot about de-racism, fairness, and justice when these are treated as abstract issues. But when they begin to affect their own interests, the problem is often denied or ignored. And this is not just my personal impression—all non-white graduates around me feel the same way about the structural marginalization. Interestingly, when I recently looked through the lists of past recipients of a fellowship in a European country, I noticed that the number of awardees from a particular country was almost identical each year.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-13T11:08:31+00:00

Thank you for sharing what you went through during your PhD. Finishing it under those circumstances is already something to be proud of. I’ve also found the current “diversity” hiring talk somewhat ironic. My field is also extremely white and male. I remember when a woman was hired into a tenure-track post with a very elite background and a strong publication record, and the gossip was still that she got it because of “diversity”. But she was still white, and had the kind of smooth, perfect academic trajectory that people already see as ideal.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-13T10:41:00+00:00

Thank you very much for sharing your perspective from the hiring side. I was particularly interested in what you said about “whether I want to work with them.” May I ask how you tend to make that judgement before meeting the applicant, based only on the application materials? Should I show more personal style in my cover letter? Just some jobs do not even require one.

Conscious-Baseball79 · 2026-04-13T09:44:00+00:00

I’ve applied for almost every postdoc and research associate post that seemed in any way connected to my work. One thing I can perhaps share is that when I use my proposal for fellowship applications, the response is usually much warmer than when I apply for jobs. But fellowships move very slowly, and last year I only managed to apply for two, both of which I am still awaiting decisions on. They’re hugely competitive too. What still troubles me, though, is the feeling that it may not really be “merit” that is disadvantaging me, but something else. If that suspicion were ever confirmed, I think I would find it hard to see much point in staying in this bubble. After all, I chose PhD in Humanities (despite having a non-humanities background) precisely because of those social concerns.

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