What's in a Case for Support?

Your case should explicitly address the requirements and questions below as well as describing briefly the research are in which the visitor works. You must explain why the visitor should be considered to be a "distinguished" visitor. For a senior visitor, the distinction may relate to reputation and a recognised body of work. For a more junior visitor, we would expect to see evidence of an accelerating career trajectory and exceptional achievements for their career stage.

The requiremenmts for Visiting fellowships are as follows:

1. All visitors must present at least one seminar which is open to all members of the SICSA community.

2. For visits of 2 weeks or more, visitors will be expected to present a masterclass on their work aimed at the SICSA postgraduate community. Normally, this should consist of at least 3 presentations pitched at the level of an interested PhD student. Of course, this could be combined with a seminar presentation, or it could form part of a SICSA Workshop (which the postgraduate community can attend and can reasonably be expected to be able to benefit from) or a SICSA Summer School. It would be helpful if any such activities (if split between sites) could take into account the geographical dispersion of SICSA institutions.

3. Details of visits (and associated events such as seminars and presentations) should be emailed to admin@sicsa.ac.uk at least one month in advance. A mini-biography of the visitor (150 – 250) words should be forwarded at the same time. This will allow information to be made available via the SICSA web pages and will give the opportunity for members of the SICSA community to see who is coming and to plan possible interaction with them.

4. The proposer should take steps to arrange for distinguished visitor presentations to be recorded and made available through the SICSA web site (this could be on a local or other site with a link or they could be stored directly on the SICSA site). This is to ensure that staff and students who were not able to attend can view the appropriate content. It also allows SICSA to have a tangible record of visits that will be available after the visits are complete.

5. In order to allow SICSA to gain maximum value and to built on visits, proposers should write a short (300 word max) report on the visit. This should detail the activities undertaken, the links which have been created and/or enhanced and, importantly, activities or actions which are planned as a result. Payment may not be made until this has been received.

The questions that your case should address are:

1. Which research themes does the visit relate to? [it is desirable but not essential that the visit is related to one or more of the SICSA themes]

2. How will the visit benefit researchers at the institution being visited?

3. What other research groups in Scotland might benefit from the visit?

4. How will the visitor interact with SICSA researchers outside of the institution being visited?

5. What funding are you requesting from SICSA [the amounts that I suggested should be seen as limits]? What other sources are contributing to funding for the visit?

In essence, if you are seeking the full amount of SICSA funding which has been suggested, then we will expect to see significant value for the SICSA community, and not just the institution being visited.  On the other hand, if you are supporting the visit mainly from other sources and simply require some SICSA top-up funding, simply inviting other SICSA partners to a seminar would be seen as acceptable interaction.