Fellowships

School of Physical Sciences: Fellowship Candidates 2025/26

The School of Physical Sciences, Open University, actively encourages and supports internal and external candidates, from early career researchers, to established career staff, in applying for fellowships to support them undertaking research (or other) fellowship activities within our School.

We are currently soliciting interest from potential fellowship candidates (both internal and external to the OU) for early-career, independent and senior fellowships, and kindly request those with an interest in applying for fellowships in the 2025/6 academic year, hosted at the Open University, to complete the expression of interest (EOI) form, publication list and a narrative CV (follow this link to read about narrative CVs) , and return them to STEM-SPS-HOS@open.ac.uk by 12 noon on Friday 27th June 2025.  We strongly welcome 5-year independent fellowship candidates e.g. STFC ERF, UKRI FLF, as well as ERC Starter and Royal Society Candidates and more senior candidates for e.g. Faraday Fellowships, ERC Consolidator and Advanced grants as well as Leverhulme Professorial and Research Fellowships as well as early career fellowships for those just / recently completed their PhD studies.  

We are particularly interested to hear from potential STFC ERF candidates: the School has three applicant places available for the 2025 application round. Our STFC research interests are focused in Extragalactic Astronomy, Planetary Sciences, Exoplanets, Astrochemistry, Astrobiology, and Space Instrumentation, though candidates from all fields of “Astronomy” in its broadest sense are welcome to apply through our EOI selection process. The candidate selection for the STFC ERF places allocated to the OU will be made on July 7th 2025, candidates informed of the outcome by the end of that week, and asked to decide not sooner than July 18th 2025, but not later than July 28th 2025,  if they will select the offer to apply through the OU or not. Applications with STFC formally close on Oct 1st 2025 and candidates will usually be encouraged to visit the OU and delivering a seminar  before submitting their application: the applicants will be supported throughout the process by both their OU sponsor and an OU mentor and OU research-enterprise administrative staff.   

Before completing the EOI form, we actively encourage you to discover our wide-ranging and internationally-leading research, outreach and knowledge exchange activities, (https://www.open.ac.uk/science/physical-science/) and discuss your potential project with our staff in person, by email and / or over video conferencing. If you are not sure whom to talk to, our Director of Research (Dr Helen Fraser) is on hand to help you (STEM-SPS-DOR@open.ac.uk). You must have secured the support of an academic faculty member in the School prior to submitting your EOI. It may be possible to arrange an in person visit to our campus on Monday 16th or Monday 23rd June 2025 for potential candidates prior to this year’s EOI closing date.

We have a strong record of mentoring and supporting individuals to securing a wide range of fellowships, and supporting these fellows onwards in their permanent academic careers, within the OU and beyond. We also positively encourage career-break returners to apply for fellowships, and always encourage all individuals meeting the specific criteria of a scheme, irrespective of background, to be considered for fellowships.

It is important to know that an expression of interest does not necessarily mean we will be able to support your application. To ensure submission of high quality, competitive proposals, the School runs an internal selection process for all fellowship applications. Fellowship applicants are selected on the basis of likely success in highly competitive schemes, strategic match with OU research / business interests, and where individuals can demonstrate attributes that are well matched to the scheme that they are applying to. For some fellowships, a demand management system is in place, and candidates will be selected based on the expression of interest information (and CV) provided, which may be followed up by informal discussions (in person or via video link) prior to any final decisions being communicated: this can occur at School and University level. We will always provide you with our feedback; selected candidates will be offered mentoring and support throughout the application process, including mock interviews and proposal reviews. If we don’t feel you are ready for a fellowship application yet, then we will offer some advice to enable you to return to us in the future.

We look forward to hearing from you, answering your questions, and look forward to your expression of interest, leading to successful fellowship applications in 2025/26.

Dr Helen Fraser (Director of Research, School of Physical Sciences).