Bursaries for Research Trips in English Studies for 2025

Purpose and Types of Bursaries

In 2025, ESSE offers funding of up to €24,000 in total to help cover costs associated with research trips.

According to its Constitution, ESSE’s goal is “to advance the education of the public by promoting the European study and understanding of English languages, literatures in English and cultures of English-speaking peoples”. Thus, ESSE welcomes applications for research trip bursaries from its members in disciplinary areas belonging to English Studies broadly understood, including but not limited to literatures, cultures and history, film and visual studies, linguistics, applied linguistics, TEFL methodology, etc., pertaining to English-speaking countries (for gender studies, there is a specific bursary – see Bursaries for Research Trips in Gender Studies within English Studies). 

The purpose of bursaries is to enable the bursary holders to make a short-term visit to a country where they can, for example, identify an outstanding holding, collection or other type of material relevant to their research, or where they gather corpus materials or conduct an experiment. Conference participation is not supported by these bursaries; bursary holders may extend their visit at their own expense, for example, to attend a conference in the country concerned, etc., but no part of the expenses incurred during the extended stay period will be covered by the bursary. 

ESSE offers two types of travel bursaries:

  • Type A: a number of bursaries of up to €1,800 each will be available for scholars in need of support to pursue a project or programme of research leading to the writing of their PhD dissertation.
  • Type B: a number of bursaries of up to €1,800 each will be available for scholars already holding a doctorate or its equivalent.

Eligibility

Applications are invited from individual members of all member associations. Bursaries are made on the basis of academic merit. Only one application per person is allowed. Applications for Type A and Type B Bursaries will not normally be entertained from candidates who have previously been successful in that competition.

Applicants for both types of bursaries must be members of their national associations affiliated to ESSE according to the official membership list submitted to ESSE in November 2024.

Applications

Applications should be submitted through this online application form. When completing the form, you will be asked to upload the following documents:

For Type A bursaries, a letter of recommendation, not longer than 350 words, must be sent by the PhD candidate’s supervisor to the Committee e-mail address below. The letter of recommendation is to bear the official letterhead of the university, the position of the writer of the letter, and it must include a hand-written signature;

Formally insufficient and incomplete applications as well as applications deviating significantly from the ESSE Budget and Reimbursement Guidelines will be disqualified.

In the application, the applicants should explain the relevance of their project for English studies and specify the length of the trip planned, even if the exact dates at the time of the application are not known. Applicants should briefly explain the reasoning behind the length of the proposed stay, bearing in mind that ESSE bursaries are intended to enable research visits to an institution in another country. Submitted proposals must be drafted carefully with a clear focus on the activities connected to the proposed research project and a clearly specified budget, and the research must be carried out as specified in the accepted proposal. In case the ESSE project is embedded within a larger project, the proposal must spell out how the expenses claimed from ESSE relate to other financial sources contributing to the overall costs of the whole project (or longer stay). 

Any change to the original proposal for the research stay, after it has been accepted (e.g., changing the destination or the length of stay), is subject to the prior approval by the Selection Committee and the ESSE Treasurer. To seek their approval, the applicants should direct a motivated request to the Chair of the Selection Committee and to the ESSE Treasurer, in which they outline the exceptional and unforeseeable circumstances that made it inevitable to alter the original proposal.

 Dates and Procedures

  • The deadline for applications for both types of Bursaries is 1st February 2025. 
  • Notification to the applicants will be sent (electronically) by 15th March 2025. 
  • Bursaries must be utilized and the study trips completed by 1st January 2026.
  • After completing the research trip, bursary holders have to send a financial report to the Treasurer of ESSE (esse.treasurer@outlook.com)  and a report about their results to the Chair of the Selection Committee (essegrants2025@gmail.com), no later than 15th  January 2026. This latter report may be published in the ESSE Messenger. The grantee must acknowledge the ESSE grant in any publication, dissertation or conference presentation that is the output of the grant, and inform ESSE of this.

Selection Committee

  • Prof. Jacek Fabiszak (Chair)
  • Prof. Željka Babić 
  • Prof. Işıl Baş
  • Prof. Giuseppe Balirano