Conference and Workshop Grants

There are no deadlines for this fund. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, but applicants should bear in mind that consideration of their application may take up to two months from the date of application. They should therefore apply at least two months in advance of the start of the planned research activity.

Applications are judged by a subcommittee consisting of the officer responsible for this scheme, the President and the Vice-President.

The main purpose of conferences, workshops or seminars supported must be the dissemination of research and/or pedagogic practice in the broadly defined field of French Studies. The principal criterion for an award will be the perceived academic value of the meeting in competition with others. Applicants will be expected to have planned their event well in advance and to have obtained primary funding from their university institution or other appropriate sources. Applicants are required to state all other sources of funding, but funding from other sources will not in itself be seen as a weakness in an application. Both major international meetings and smaller-scale specialist colloquia, including one-day events, will be considered on their academic merits.

The Society for French Studies exists to promote teaching and research in French studies in higher education. Events supported by this scheme should be aligned with this objective.

Applications will only be accepted from the event organizer(s), who will normally be academics and postgraduates, belonging to higher education departments of French (or departments which teach French) in the UK and Ireland, who are undertaking to organize conferences in the UK or Ireland. Exceptionally, the Society will consider funding for events taking place outside of the UK and Ireland where the lead applicant belongs to a British or Irish institution of higher education and where international collaboration is integral to the event.

Applicants must be members of the Society for French Studies.

Grants will normally range from £100 to £1000 where appropriate and where possible within available resource. The Society is happy to co-sponsor events, but such co-sponsorship will not normally exceed the contribution made by any other individual co-sponsor.

Grants may be used as a contribution towards the travel, accommodation and maintenance expenses of bringing speakers from within the UK and Ireland or from overseas. Grants may also be applied for to assist with administrative expenses: full details must be given, as known at the time of the application.

Honoraria or other fees or payments to speakers are not eligible for support. Grants are not available for lecture series, or seminar series, or for events that form part of an institution’s teaching or training programme. Support is not available under this scheme for the subsidy of publications produced as a result of conference activity. The regular annual conferences of major subject associations or learned societies will not normally be eligible for support, and the Society prefers not to support conferences and meetings organized by other French Studies Societies which might reasonably be expected to subsidize the event themselves. Grants are not available for meetings that are projected to make a profit.

All applications must demonstrate a financial case for support. Please clearly identify any item for which grant support is sought in the application, and explain and justify why the Society’s support is requested. Please clearly itemize against each relevant named speaker the costs of travel, accommodation and maintenance for which funding is sought. Priority may be given to early career scholars and postgraduate students.

If a grant is awarded, the organizers will be required to acknowledge the financial support of the Society in all subsequent publicity, conference or workshop programmes, and in any resulting publications. Copies of this material should be included in the report dossier to be sent in, together with the conference report and accounts, after the event to the coordinator of the grant scheme (Professor Steven Wilson). In addition, the organizers are to send a copy of the conference report to the editor of French Studies Bulletin (Dr Jennifer Rushworth), and to submit a copy of the detailed final conference accounts to the HonoraryTreasurer of the Society (Dr Paul Hegarty). Should the conference make an unanticipated profit, the Society would expect to be reimbursed proportionally, and up to an amount not exceeding the original grant. The Society reserves the right to ask for a refund, should costs not reach the expected level.